Another Long Walk: Day 6: Adventures in the Lake District

August 3, 2024: It rained a bit during the night, but I slept well in the landpod. The night felt particularly chilly, but the comforter for the bed was super thick and I was positively hot under it.

After waking up, I went into the main building to eat breakfast where I bumped into the same group of people I had dinner with last night, so we continued our conversation from the previous evening.

Today I planned a relatively short day of hiking, so I didn't rush to get out, but I didn't make a point of lingering too late either. Chatting with the other hikers definitely slowed me down, but I managed to get myself ready and hiking just before 10:00am.

Just as I was leaving the landpod, a fire alarm in the main building went off and everyone in it started evacuating, pouring out of the building. I didn't see any flames or smoke billowing out of the building, so I assumed it was probably a false alarm, but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

However.... I realized, this might make it difficult for me to return the key for the landpod if I couldn't go into the building to and if there was nobody inside to return it to, but I saw a hostel worker outside directing people to the evacuation zone and handed the key off to him.

Then I was off, never to learn for certain if the hostel was really burning to the ground or not. Not my circus, not my monkey!

About ten minutes later, I caught up with John from "Seattle" and started hiking with him, chatting away. He hiked up the hills slowly and said it was okay if I wanted to push on ahead, but I had only planned to do a 10-mile day or so and therefore wasn't in any particular rush. I didn't mind slowing down and chatting.

This is John, from "Seattle"

At Grisedale Tarn, there was a choice of three different routes that thru-hikers could take: the easy route, the moderately-difficult route, and the "you've got to be kidding me" route. My plan was to take the moderately difficult route. The guidebook warned that the hardest of the routes required walking on knife edges that could be positively dangerous in strong winds or wet conditions, and the winds were strong! Not so wet, at least not today, but definitely strong winds. So yeah, that route was never a contender in my book.

Anyhow, according to my guidebook, many people think the moderately-difficult route was actually the most scenic of the three, so views weren't even a good reason to do the most difficult route.

However.... by the time I arrived at the junction, I was reconsidering my options and leaning toward the easy route. There were a few factors leading to my change of heart. One was seeing the steep climb up to the top of the ridge where the moderately-difficult route went. The second was the wind. It was brutal, and I imagined it would be even worse at the top of the ridge. And finally, I was just having a good time chatting with John and wanted to keep hiking with him, and after his disastrous day yesterday, he was now firmly committed to always taking the easiest route selections possible. I'd never be able to convince him to take a more difficult route.

So, in the end, I took the easier route.

The route was nice and easy! =)

The weather was absolutely amazing except for the brutal wind and a bit of a haze on the horizon. Otherwise, clear skies and fairly warm. The views were delightful. =)

After getting over the pass and by the tarn, the trail descended into the town of Patterdale where John and I finally split ways. He headed to a B&B where he had a reservation. I had no reservation but planned to wild camp somewhere beyond the town. Looking ahead on the maps, I saw two potentially good places to set up camp, one located 1.2 miles ahead and a second one that was 2.2 miles ahead. Less than an hour walk, regardless.

Having arrived in Patterdale at 4:30pm, I had several hours before sunset and decided to take a break at the Patterdale Hotel where I ordered a "tasty toastie" (that's what it was actually called on the menu), some onion rings and a pint of Pepsi. Perfect for an early dinner! I sat outside where there were dozens of picnic tables on a grassy field for that purpose.

While there, a couple of the hikers who I had bumped into at the slate mine that decided to take the bus down the mountain instead of walking in that horrible rainstorm noticed me and stopped to chat for a few minutes. They were surprised I wasn't far ahead them already, but I was equally surprised that they weren't a day ahead of me! Of course, they had no idea that I had taken an extra zero day because of the rain, but I had no idea they had taken the day off today. It was a rest day for them.

"Wait a minute," I said, trying to make sure I understood this correctly. "You walked through horrendous weather for two full days... then took the day off when the weather was gorgeous like today?!"

But they said they had already made reservations ahead of time which made their schedule a bit inflexible. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Really quite a bummer for them. In hindsight, I'm sure that they would have preferred taking one of those stormy days off and hiking today. After a few minutes, they left to return to wherever it was they were staying in town.

To kill additional time, I wrote in my journal to get that out of the way and read my Kindle.

This was the dining area in front of the Patterdale Hostel

I finally left town at around 6:00. I could have probably left even later and made it to camp before sunset, but why risk it? No reason to arrive into camp too late.

So I pushed onward, climbing a steep slope to the top of a ridge to a point labeled Boedale Hause, which had a commanding view over the valley I had just come out of it. It was absolutely wonderful, and I decided to stop there for the night.

I set up my tent and made myself comfortable. Over the next hour or so, I was surprised that about half a dozen other people hiked by with the intention of camping at the lake another mile up the trail. It must be a beautiful location for that many people to be pushing on to it, but it was starting to seem like it might be crowded there as well. I rather liked the fact that I was the only person at this particular location setting up camp. =)

And thus ended another day on the trail.....

This is Grisedale Tarn. The hard route went up that mountain behind it. The easy route went down the valley near the right side of the photo. The moderately-difficult route isn't visible in this photo, but it would be the ridge to the right of this photo.