Lost Again

Pete here. I had a bit of a rough nite still. Not as bad as the previous night, just had to get up a couple of times, and then midway thru the nite I awoke and my stomach had stopped bubbling. I could sense that the worst was over. It still takes a few days to recover but the “shart” danger was past for the most part.

Our B+B last nite was run by an older couple, maybe in their early 80s. The guy, Henry, was the classic British guy, very droll sense of humor. They were extremely nice, bfast was very tasty, standard E bfast. We chatted about bike touring in France, and his visit to New England. There was also a snooty English woman as the other guest. She said she had a friend who lived in Boston and this person referred to the North Woods of NH, Maine, and the “green desert”.

So away we went at about 9:00. Got lunch made at the local store. Turkey sandwiches for the first time on the trip. Today would be 14 miles and we were thinking it’d be pretty easy after all we had been thru. Turns out we kind of got our asses kicked. Sigh.

This was like the reverse of the super-hard 16 mile day we had done a few days back. That is, today we had the hard uphill to start, then a long woods and lake walk. And we were right this pattern sucked. You’re beat from the hill and the flats seem to take forever and kill your feet.

So we start off, my stomach is bubbling again after the bfast. So I gotta go but there are two guys walking towards us. Damn! I do the tight-butt-cheeks hobble past them then sprint behind a stone wall. Whew! Now the problem was for some reason there were lots of people around this morning. Usually we see no one, hence the quick crap off the trail is easily done. But now that we’re in the Lakes district there are lots of day walkers. Then after we climbed our first hill and we on a long flat section in the Moors, I get my second attack. People in front and people behind. The hell with it, I throw off my pack and dash behind a small rock up cropping, this blocks the view for the people coming our way unless they turn around. But they saw me rush off the trail so they know the program. April who was waiting by the trail gave them a nice hello as they passed by. Ha-ha.

I’m feeling worn out so April is doing the navigating, and everything seems to line up, but then we see this tarn (small lake). That’s not on our map, What the hell?! So April asks this old guy and he whips out a map and starts explaining the tarn, and the next tarn, and all the peaks, and he says you’re climbing Haystack. At first I didn’t believe him, but he was certain. So we were really off the planned route. But then as we looked at his map and ours we realized we could turn this into a shortcut with just some slight bushwhacking.

We stop for a snack. Then drop down off the mountain. Mistake number two. We’re sliding down this unused shale trail. It was really bad; it turns out this was the wrong trail off the mtn. Then we could see the correct trail off to our right, so we cut over toward it. And we had to hop a wire fence, which was the first fence we’ve seen that wasn’t barbed wire. Not so bad we think. We drop down some and April scouts out a route thru a grassy knoll. We can see the track below us that we’re supposed to be on. So we decide we can get there from here and away we go. And I just want to remind you April is the lead navigator today, as I’m leaning over intermittently with stomach cramps. Mistake #3. This wasn’t really a trail. The ground was very uneven, lots of grass and wood (as this has been cut in the past), no sheep had cleared it. Then we hit a fence. And we’ve never seen such a fence here. It’s a 5 foot high fence of chicken wire. We couldn’t really climb over it. The road was wanted to be on was about 100 yards below us. So we’re walking along the fence boundary for about ¼ mile, no rocks or logs to help us get over it, the terrain ois terrible, we almost had a couple of ankle sprains. And finally we realize the fence turns left and goes down to the road. So all we had to do was walk to the end and then drop to the road. Nice. And we also realized that if we somehow had managed to climb over it, there was a lower fence about 50 yards further so we would have climbed into a squared off pen. Idiots.

Now we had about 3 hours of flats 1/2 on a dirt road and 1/2 on a beautiful lake side trail. The road sucked, we had been on our feet enough so the consistent road pounding really hurts. Then the lake trail was all wet roots and slippery angled rocks. I was really knackered by now. It turned into an 8 hour day. We didn’t get to our town, Ennerdale Bridge until 5:30.

Tiny little town, but nice large room in the hotel, large bathroom with a great shower and tub. Nice sheets, large towels. We limped down for dinner, and it turned out it was sort of gourmet pub food. I had risotto, April had pork roulade stuffed with blue cheese and spinach with figs/asparagus and the standard boiled veggies on the side. Then we crashed.

Minor notes: had our first view of Scotland today. Tomorrow is our last day. We’re looking forward to a few days off our feet before flying to Italy.