Tuesday 27 July 2010

Day 4: Grasmere to Patterdale

Something amazing happened today: it stopped raining and the sun came out. Not for vast amounts of time, granted, but long enough for us to get our cellos out at the highest point of the day's walk, just above Grisedale Tarn - about 600m up the slopes of Helvellyn (pictured).

This was one of the highlights of a good day's walking - again not the furthest in terms of mileage (about 9 miles, meaning we've now done 46 in total), but a good climb and descent, with a novelty in arriving at our destination in dry clothes!

Another highlight was meeting a group of kids on the way down, on a YHA-run adventure course (they were camping up where we had just come from), who turned out to be wonderfully polite, interested and enthusiastic to hear us play - and despite being no older than about 13, generous in their donations too. The sort of encounter that really leaves a good feeling about the whole challenge!

So we're staying in Patterdale tonight, perhaps entertaining the locals later, and preparing ourselves for a much bigger walk tomorrow - the highest climb of the whole route and 16 miles to boot (well, to Shap actually!). Fingers crossed for some dry weather...

Quote of the day: "So, are yous lads all army then?"

2 comments:

CoeFenBlogger said...

You'll be done by the end of the day according to the GPS tracker. At 12:48 it said you were travelling at 14658 mph!

Unknown said...

We were in the group from the yha,aged 13-16. We really enjoyed listening to your performance. It really lightened our day up and put
a smile on our faces. Thank you!