Day 3: Rosthwaite to Patterdale
Having listened to it rain all night, we were relieved to get up and find that it was only spitting. Dave cooked us bacon sandwiches for breakfast while I stuck Compeed (fancy blister plasters) on my heels, and then we packed up the tent to go. Two 15-year-old girls dressed in crowns and feather boas were collecting money for the charity Coast to Coast walk they were doing. We gave them some money, although they were only doing the first 3 days. Pussies. The rain didn't look like it was stopping anytime soon, so we put our waterproofs on and set off.
After yesterday's no-lunch debacle we walked via the town's Post Office to buy some food. After waiting quarter of an hour for it to open, Dave and I bought two of the 5 sandwiches they had in stock and started walking. We immediately got too hot and took off our waterproofs.
With a total ascent of 4423 ft this was going to be a hard day, with a 500m climb right at the start. Just to make things a bit more difficult it began raining properly, so we stopped again to put our waterproofs back on. We soon met up with Bruce and Sheila (Dave and Rebecca, we discovered), so we walked with them for a bit before forging ahead on our own.
At the top was a bit of a plain between two peaks: High Raise and Ullscarf. It was pretty boggy and considering the current condition of my feet, I was in no hurry to test out my boots' waterproofing. We managed to get across ok, and we started the descent down the valley into Grasmere which we estimated was about 20 minutes away. An hour later, we were still walking with no Grasmere, or any of the roads leading to it, in sight. Our surroundings didn't seem to line up with the map, so we began to worry that we'd walked down the wrong valley. As we walked on, we came to the conclusion that we had walked down the wrong valley. Still, by this point, it'd probably have been quicker to just head to Grasmere from the bottom of whichever valley we were in, rather than walking back up and starting again. To top it all off, Dave twisted his knee coming down and was in quite a bit of pain. We eventually came across a group of walkers going the other way, who assured us that we were on the right path. Sure enough, we soon found the road we'd been expecting for the past hour and a half, and followed it towards Grasmere.
We stopped for lunch at Thorny How Youth Hostel, and took quite a while eating and resting. The Compeed on my heels was beginning to peel off, so I shoved some micropore tape on it while I attempted to dry out my socks. There were some deer eating from the bushes behind us which I rather splendidly failed to take a nice photo of:
They were very small. Finally, I dug out the tubigrip I'd brought and Dave sensibly put it on his knee. It was about 2.30pm now, and we were debatably only half-way through the day: not a good sign. We immediately saw Dave and Rebecca again who were heading to the pub for a quick lunch. As there were two possible routes up the next 500m climb, we all consulted their guide book: the Little Tongue route was supposed to be fairly easy but very boring, whereas the Tongue Gill path was harder but with the promise of some waterfalls near the top. Being gluttons for punishment, Dave and I chose the latter option. After leaving Dave and Rebecca to get to the pub, we set off. The path was quite nice and Bola was so impressed with the view that he insisted on getting his photo taken in front of it:
Dave and I thought we were making some pretty good progress as we appeared to be quickly catching up with the group ahead, but as we caught up I realised that one of them was blind and so understandably they were going fairly slowly. As the path wasn't the easiest terrain in the world, I was pretty damn impressed - we were struggling enough as it was! As we passed, they were trying to find the easiest place for him to cross a river. As if to further boost my feelings of inadequacy, on crossing the same river I almost fell in.
At the top, we still had about 4.5 miles to go, so we quickly began the 450m descent. I say quickly, but as Dave's knee injury caused him problems when we were going downhill, and he was now in quite a bit of pain, we were pretty slow. By the time we got into Patterdale, we'd been walking for about 9 hours, so we were both exhausted. I was in a pretty bad mood as a result. When we disagreed as to which corner of the road we were on on the map, I had a bit of a strop. An argument ensued and so we both pulled out a compass to take a bearing and thus prove each other wrong. Dave's bearing was right. Arse. More confusing however, was that my bearing didn't appear to line up with either mine or Dave's position on the map. I re-did it, but it still didn't seem to fit, though by this point I was too tired to care. We finally got to Side Farm where we were to stay the night after 9 1/2 hours of walking, only to find out that the campsite was another half-mile away. When we eventually got there, we both collapsed.
When I finally worked up the energy to change my boots for my flip-flops, I discovered that the Compeed plasters that I'd put on my heels had not only peeled off in my boots, but had taken half my skin with them. So my two small blisters were now two über-blisters (or in fact two giant holes where the blisters had been), and now my heels were bleeding. Also, my rucksack had worn two holes into the small of my back. I decided to cheer myself up by having a shower, but it wasn't possible to change the temperature of the water and mine had apparently been set to 'scolding'. I have never experienced so much pain as I did when I first got in and the water hit my back and heels. I actually almost screamed. Seriously.
As we were sorting out the tents afterwards, two fighter jets flew over the campsite at about 10cm off the ground. If my Dad or my brother had been there, they'd have been able to tell me not only what planes they were, but also their serial numbers or something. As it was, we made do with Dave's guess that they were Eurofighters, on the grounds that the RAF has a lot of Eurofighters now. Regardless of what make they were, they were LOUD.
As the nearest pub was a mile away from the campsite, I almost didn't bother, but in the end we staggered over. I still had no phone reception so I used Dave's mobile to call home. Dave called his girlfriend, Naomi, afterwards. When she heard about our day she said, "You don't actually have to do it all, you know". We disagreed, but only just.
The pub was actually a hotel, and quite a posh one at that. It was quite expensive, but the food was very nice. My steak came with cauliflower and peas which I don't like, but I was so hungry I ate them anyway. We both drank soft-drinks as we were far too exhausted to stomach any alcohol. We began to talk about the 9 days we had in front of us, and how we were going to struggle if they were anything like today's experience. Dave broached the suggestion of sherpa-ing our bags between campsites for a day or two, as Sherpa Van had offered, but at £6 a day for each bag, I wasn't too keen, especially as then we'd have nothing to carry our lunch, waterproofs, water, etc. in during the day. Then Dave came up with, quite frankly, a genius solution: we'd shove all the heavy stuff like the tent and stove in my rucksack (the larger one of the two), get that sherpa-ed to the next campsite, and then we could share the carrying of Dave's then-lighter rucksack during the day. That way, we'd only have to pay £3 each per day, and we'd still have a bag with us to put the essentials in while we were walking. I was sold, for tomorrow at least. So we stumbled back to our tent and rang up Sherpa Van to arrange it. If they'd said they couldn't at this point, I think I'd have been a broken man, but luckily they said that it was fine. We ate some Haribo that my girlfriend had given me "for emergencies only" and then went to bed, feeling rather more optimistic than we had done a couple of hours ago.
Day 3 Stats:
Distance: 16 miles
Total Ascent: 1348m
Total Descent: 1290m
Time taken: 9.5 hours
SMR (Stile-to-Mile Ratio): 0.88
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