Day 2: Ennerdale Bridge to Rosthwaite
In the morning, we packed up the tent and then we took on a Full English breakfast in the farm house. I hadn't been too keen on the idea originally, but Dave had managed to convince me and I was happy he did: it was a monster. A whole orange to start, then cereal, then toast, then cooked breakfast, then toast again. This, combined with the consummate camping and shower arrangements, meant that Low Cock How Farm was going to be a hard campsite to beat in the next 11 days. The fact it was called Low Cock How Farm was just the icing on the cake.
After fashioning a washing line on my rucksack out of some string I'd brought, we set off for the day. For about 2.5 miles we had to walk alongside a big lake called Ennerdale Water. The terrain was very rocky and quite slow-going - not the most encouraging start to the day. Still, it looked very nice.
We began to get hungry. This was a bit of a problem: the night before, we (Dave) had estimated that today would be quite a short one, and that as we'd be having cooked breakfast in the morning, we wouldn't want to eat until we reached Rosthwaite. So we hadn't bought any lunch. As we walked through Ennerdale Forest, it soon became apparent that this was a mistake - it was already lunchtime, and we hadn't even reached the day's big climb. Oops. I dug out some biscuits and chocolate and we soldiered onwards. In the meantime, I got another blister - my left heel this time.
We eventually reached the end of the forest and stopped at the Black Sail Youth Hostel, just at the bottom of the 300m ascent we had yet to climb.
We replenished our water bottles and were very happy to find out that the youth hostel sold pieces of chocolate chip sponge. As we sat and psyched ourselves up for the next bit of walking, an Australian couple came and chatted to us. They'd seen that we were using a map case with "134th Scouts" written on it, and as they were both Scout or Venture (I forget which) leaders, they'd come to investigate. I explained that Dave was a Scout leader and we'd borrowed some equipment off his group. It turned out that they were in England for a holiday, part of which they were spending by taking on the first four days of the Coast to Coast. They seemed very friendly, and after a brief chat we headed off. We realised that we'd completely missed their names, so decided that they were probably called Bruce and Sheila.
The climb was hard work, but Dave and I made a big effort and beasted it. The view from the top was pretty spectacular:
At the top we followed the hill/mountain around and joined up with a disused tramway which was our path down. By this point we were very hungry so we put our heads down and made for Rosthwaite. We took a slight detour to avoid a bit of winding path through Seatoller, although as we managed to get a bit lost it was pretty debatable whether or not we'd saved any time in doing so.
We finally arrived in Rosthwaite, and more importantly the Gillercombe Bed & Breakfast where we'd be camping. As we walked through the gates we saw a small, neat garden and I excitedly assumed we'd struck gold again with our choice of campsite. Alas, the female owner came out and informed us that the campsite was just down the road. "Well, I wasn't going to let you stay in my garden", she said blankly. I resisted the urge to joke that the last place had, and we headed to the campsite which actually turned out to be pretty good in the end. We set up the tent, chucked on our flip-flops and walked the half-mile to the nearest pub for dinner.
We arrived at the pub at about 5.30pm and, having not eaten properly for about 9 hours, tried to order some food. They didn't serve food till 6pm though which was pretty dark, and the fact that there was no phone reception just added to the darkness. We cheered up when we finally got our dinner, although I ate mine so quickly I felt sick. Still, I had some apple pie afterwards. We consoled ourselves over the lack of phone reception by charging our phones while we ate.
After a couple of beers we tried to turn the night into a pub crawl and go into the Royal Oak (the only other pub) for a drink, only to find that it was actually a hotel, so we went back to the tent instead. I beat Dave at chess again (he gave up saying I was already winning by too much), then we went to bed. We didn't play chess again.
Day 2 Stats:
Distance: 16 miles
Total Ascent: 722m
Total Descent: 733m
Time taken: 7.5 hours
SMR (Stile-to-Mile Ratio): 1.06
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