Steve and Steff's Honeymoon trek

A Wet Weekend in Eskdale

What a lively weekend.

We went up to Eskdale, in the Lake District, for a spot of camping. Talk about wild! It rained and rained and when it stopped raining, it was just because it was saving up to absolutely bucket down.

On Saturday, we had the best of intentions of climbing England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike, but the closer we got to it, the less we could see of it. Given the fact that the mountain isn’t going anywhere and there’s always tomorrow, we gave the peak up as a bad job and got wet through walking, scrambling and falling over, the scree slopes on the bank of Wast Water. That was hard work. The rocks were horribly slippery and one false footing could have broken an ankle instantly. It seemed to take hours to do the 4 or 5 miles along the side.
I have to say that the Paramo jackets we were both wearing may be among the best waterproofs (kind-of) in the world, but even they couldn’t handle 15 miles in torrential rain. By the time we got back to the tent, Steff and I were soaked through to the skin. One advantage of wimp camping in a biggish tent, is having an electric hook-up. On went the heater and the kettle and after a hot shower we were nice and toasty again. Watching a deluge from inside the tent was much nicer than experiencing it first hand – though it was very noisy.

We were very fortunate that our camp site was reasonably sheltered. Some friends of ours were camping it up in Wales and the porch was ripped off the front of their tent. It took 6 of them to get it under control and folded up in the car.

Sunday was spent in Ambleside trying to find some new mountain boots for me. Failed miserably; despite trying on the footwear of most of the shops.

To the lovely lady we met from Warrington – I do apologise. I didn’t get your name! If you read this, do click on the comment button below and leave a message. You could also send me an e-mail using the Contact page.

- Steve.