Day4: Grasmere to Patterdale

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Trip Start Aug 20, 2010 Previous
Entry Trip End Dec 19, 2010 Next
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  Patterdale, England, United Kingdom
Friday, August 27, 2010

    We strolled to Grasmere in search of baked goods and cash.  Thankfully we got both.  We loaded up with a pastie each and a huge wedge of flapjack.  We set off on the calf busting climb to Grisedale Tarn.  We had decided the night before to make our choice of route at this point.  In order to help our thought process we each consumed a fist sized wedge of the world's best flapjack.  Maybe it was the flapjack talking, but we set off up Dollywagon Pike on the way to Helvellyn and Striding Edge.  
    If you thought we were mad doing this walk, we then saw a mountain biker and one of the group behind us went for a swim in the freezing cold tarn.  From Dollywagon we went across High Crag and on up to the top of the third highest peak in England (950m).  By the time we had reached the summit, we had been climbing up from Grasmere for 4 hours.  
    Next was the challenge of Striding Edge.  To reach the edge we had to scramble down 30m of steep jagged and obviously dangerous rockface.  Our motto was Go Slow and Use Your Bum Liberally! In addition to the danger of falling off, Steve had to contend with Amy propelling one of her hiking poles point first in his direction.  After seeing the stick impale in the scree beside him, he looked back at the hysterically laughing Amy who claimed it was all an accident and that she was still glad to be walking along a thin edge of rock with sheer drops to either side.
    We all negotiated Striding Edge successfully, with Ben and Sue sticking to the purist's route.
Then it was time for our pastie (meat and veggies in folded pastry half the size of your face).
All we had to do now was the 3 hour descent into Patterdale.  
    Ben managed to step backwards and fall from the pathway into the ferns with Amy standing suspiciously close by.  After this nature called for Ben and he was compelled to take a "Poo with a View".  Benny the Pooh...
    We got to the White Lion in high spirits having had a great day and ran into one of our fellow hikers - Dominique - and agreed with her assessment of this being the best day of the walk so far.
    Four days in the Lake District with no rain, we defied susperstitious notions and fatefully discussed the possibility of a rain free coast to coast walk.  What fools we were!
47 miles down, 144 to go.

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