Another beautiful day. Don’t we look fresh and happy at the start of the trail? That’s because we know it will be an easy day. We even started a little later than normal. Up to Lining Crag for a cup of mid-morning tea, then a jaunty trip down to the charming and quaint town of Grasmere, home of poet William Wordsworth. Peter Rabbit country.
The landlord said, you could even do the higher walk along the ridge because the descent is on grass. If you take the low route, it’s mostly rock.
Hell, yeah, we said. Grassy descent. Right on. We still have lots of time. The guidebook said 5-1/2 hours for the high route. Lots of time.
A view of one of the magnificent and ubiquitous stone walls. They snake and climb throughout the Lake District.
Fells viewed through a broken wall.
The “easy” climb turned out to be steep and rock-strewn.
Frank checking our guidebook for a definition of “easy.”
The view from the top of Lining Crag. We had come from the valley way below in the distance.
By far the most interesting part of the trip was the bog. None of us had ever tried to walk on a peaty bog before. (Yesterday's wimpy bog didn't count.) We didn’t know what the secret was to crossing the bog. We tried all sorts of things to find firm ground. Finally Tom decided that the answer was you just ran really fast across it before it could muddy your boots too badly. At his first step, he sank knee deep into the bog. All I could think about was a story I had heard of moor ponies being sucked into boggy quicksand. Goodbye, Tom.
Tom fell flat forward and with sheer determination yanked his feet out. The bottom two feet of him was Mudzilla. We all unkindly laughed. Later the laugh was on each of us in turn, because you really can’t beat the bog; the bog will always win.
Are we having fun yet?
The start of the “jaunty” descent. Jaunty must be a synonym for perilous.
Although the views were magnificent, the climb was hard, the descent was really rocky, and the way was definitely not easy.
The entry to Grasmere went through "The Poet's Walk," a short but lovely stretch through a garden. Grasmere was home to Wordsworth and Coleridge, and they rambled the area frequently. Mary informed us that Wordsworth and his sister would sometimes hike by moonlight. He may have wandered lonely as a cloud, but I hope he had a stout pair of hiking boots and a headlamp while he did that.
I have to back up here. Just before we got to The Poet's Walk, we came to a fork in the road and had to decide which way to go. There was the ritual adjusting of clothing, water sipping, and map consulting. Mary put her camera down and we all toddled off without it. At the bottom of the descent to The Poet's Walk, Mary discovered her loss. The descent had been rocky and steep (what else?) and we weren't looking forward to going back up. Jonathan immediately volunteered and quickly took off. That qualified to me as an act of superhuman strength and heroism.
A few minutes later Jonathan was back, not enough time to have gone all the way to the top and back, superhuman or not. Behind him were some hikers we had met before. Jonathan handed Mary her camera and explained that the other hikers had found it at the top and were bringing it down to turn in at the police station. They had seen Jonathan coming up and knew immediately what he was doing. Isn't that a happy ending?
As we curse the guidebook and the landlord in Rosthwaite, we also feel very lucky to have seen what we saw. The Lake District is incredible.
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