Rain, rain, rain

So, last week, Miss Smith and I went camping in the lakes. This is the view from our first campsite.

The views were great, but it rained. It rained a lot. A lot. In a way, it was the quintessential Lakes experience, and we had the quintessential Lakes camping experience, which was to be extremely cold, extremely damp, extremely muddy, then extremely tired, hungry and sleeepy, and then do the rest all over again.  It was special. I loved it! But I'm never doing it again. 

Or at least, not in a tent.

We went to Keswick market, where local species were on sale. 

It rained.

There were mossy rocks, that were rained on.

Mountains and fields, that were quite damp. 

Also, ponies.

I've no doubt they were damp too.

Many a sheep we spied. Damply. 

We walked up to Castlerigg stone circle. In the rain. It was a beautiful and awe-inspiring sight, but not as beautiful and awe-inspiring as Kirsty eating her ginger cake straight from the packet. It was damp, though. The stone circle, not the ginger cake. 

Instructions on how to eat a ginger cake, from an Expert:

1) Obtain ginger cake. Be happy! Soon all your wishes will come true!

2) Remove plastic wrap from cake carefully, while looking incredibly happy.

3) Take bite. Corners are easy game, and there are four of them. The bolder may decide to go straight for the middle - a sticky, but delicious, error. Miss Smith, being wise, stuck to the corner. Stickily.

4) Man. That is some good ginger cake. 

Repeat.

That night, I was so cold in the tent I kept on waking up and it never really felt like I got to sleep. I was wearing 4 layers, plus sleeping bag plus two blankets. Why is camping always so much colder than I remember? And damper? And muddier? And generally less pleasant? It must be some kind of selective memory loss, like women forgetting how horrible giving birth is after they've done it and then getting pregnant all over again and then going into labour and then being like, damn. And then it's too late to do anything about it and you're all like, man, I remember how bad camping was last time! Why did I do it again? But now you're in a tent and you're really cold and muddy and you've booked it for the next 5 nights so it's tough titty, frankly. 

Disclaimer: the above may be an enormous simplification of this whole giving birth business, but reflects my true feelings on camping in the Lakes.

Fun fact - did you know that there is only 1 lake in the lake district? The others are all Meres or Waters or Tarns.  The lake below is a Mere. I can't remember which one. There were loads. Or maybe it was just a fairly large puddle after all the rain that we had. It's impossible to say. 

But it was very beautiful. 

It rained, of course. 

We climbed Helvellyn. 

We'd go ta map from the tourist info office: the lady in the office said, "don't worry too much about maps and things, it's pretty easy, and also, it looks like it will be brightening up tomorrow!"

We've decided that 'brightening up tomorrow' is Lakes slang for 'unrelenting rain, mist, cold, utter misery, and high possibility of snow.'

We climbed and we climbed and we climbed: above is the view we started off with, and this is the view we soon got:

Amazing, isn't it?

We met a couple coming down and asked how far it was to the top - we'd been walking for 2.5 hours by this point (it's a long story - we got severely lost):

Them: Oh, an hour, probably.

Us: Is it worth it?

Man: Oh yes, definitely!

Woman: Yeah. The view is about the same, except, the only difference is, at the top there's driving rain.

Man: Oh, yeah! Driving rain!

Woman: And it's really cold. And there's no view.

*long pause*

Woman: I guess the good news is that the ascent doesn't get much harder.

Man: Totally worth it!

Woman: I'd come down if I were you. 

We came down. And we went for a much gentler 3 hour walk around Derwent Water, to the point where Wordsworth thought was the most beautiful view in the Lakes. It is below.

It was wet.

Then we climbed up to Castlehead, and there was a lovely view there too.

It rained.

Man. It rained.

We took our tent down in the rain, and little glugs of rainwater disappeared into the inside of it. We packed it up, slightly hysterically, and drove to our next location, which was again, incredibly beautiful, and more than incredibly damp. By this point, we'd had enough. We went to the front desk, and asked if we could have a camping pod. The guy at the front desk said, "yeah......nothing worse than being really, really wet and cold, is there?" He seemed happy. 

"What's the weather like for the rest of the week?" we wanted to know.

He looked at his little printed off Met office sheet.

"Probably snow," he said. 

"Ha ha!" we said. "Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha!" he agreed.

He was a cheerful sort of chap.

Anyway, this is our pod. It was wooden walls and a bare floor, but it was literally the most comfortable place we could imagine at that moment in time. It was bliss. 

In the afternoon, we climbed Dungeon Ghyll to look at the waterfall. And a tiny patch of blue sky appeared, for 10 seconds. I took a picture, just to remember it.

There were more sheep, of course. 

And it really did snow, though just on the mountain tops.

Luckily Kirsty and I kept our spirits up through all the tragedy with massive amounts of extremely hot tea, peas, noodles, cake, and, of course, our newest romantic fiction character, Chiselled Planes. Nothing cheers quite like manly rugged trousers on the Lake District eh Smith?