As predicted, we enjoyed a lovely four-day weekend in The Lake District with Stacey and Wes! Our drive up was fairly uneventful, save for the double caramel latte that Mr Fool at Costa thought I wanted. And the look he gave me for using my KeepCup! “You want it in this?!” – yes, Mr Fool – why else would I have given it to you?!

I can’t emphasise enough how lucky we were with the weather. Statistically, it rains 96% of the time at the Lake District, and yes, I most certainly did make that up on the spot. Things weren’t looking good on Friday when we arrived to find it overcast and drizzling on our shnizzles, but goodness me did things pick up on Saturday morning! Nothing but blue skies did we see, right through until Sunday evening! I even got a little sunburnt!

If you’re going on a holiday with Wes and Stacey, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’ll be some walking involved. Not that we’re complaining of course; we’re well into walking now, and even more importantly, I now look like someone who’s well into walking. Check out how technical and well equipped, and yet so wholly nonchalant I look here:

Now I have to give some credit to my new backpack which WeStace helped me pick out; not to mention the new hydration system that they also recommended. But let’s be honest; I make this stuff look good.

Anyway, back to the walks – we covered a fairly decent chunk of terrain over three days! Here’s a few of the walks we enjoyed.

The Grizedale Sculpture Trail:

This supposedly contains over 90 separate sculptures, each made out of naturally occurring materials such as wood and stone – however we only managed to find four of them! Admittedly we were only there for two hours, and we spent a good part of that foolishly following Stacey through marshlands in search of a geocache (well, that’s how I choose to remember it); but I’d be lying if I said that the trail lived up to my expectations.

Still, the sculptures that we did see were pretty cool – I wasn’t sure if this was one of them or not, but you can see one ducking out behind the shrubs on the left (or check out what it looks like up close).

Humphrey Head:

We conquered this one on Saturday morning, and picked up a couple of geocaches while we were there. In order to make it out to the edge of the headland, we had to walk through some fields of sheep, including lots of little spring lambs! And just when you think that things couldn’t get any less chalant after that magnificent display of nonchalantness above – check this out for Mr Casual!

Meathop

This one wasn’t so much of a walk as it was a quest to find the Meathop Mini Maze multi-cache, and OMG was it a challenge. Anything more than a casual glance at the description should have really managed my expectations a bit better:

The final cache has you scrambling up crags so make sure you wear suitable footwear. There are some big drops off the edge so be careful. The crags will be slippery if they are wet.

This really redefined the term “scrambling” for me. Those boulders were steep, and sharp! I even shed a little blood when my left hand collided with one of them! Thank goodness it wasn’t raining!

(Don’t take any of that as a complaint; in fact, scrambling up those boulders was the best stage of them all! Danger? Shmanger!)

Walla Crag:

By far and away the highlight of the weekend! This was a four hour walk over almost every type of terrain – mud, snow, beach, grass, streams, and even a little bit of the lake. And I think you have to agree with me that the view from the top was “not terrible”.

When we weren’t out and about on an adventure, we were back at the apartment just relaxing, and exchanging friendly banter that you’d expect at a gathering of friends. Stacey and Wes were kind enough to explain the meaning of “Gerrod music” to me – “anything with strained lyrics and heavy guitars”. I have to admit – that’s pretty much bang on.

Even the Lake District knew that our holiday was over today, as we woke up to find it absolutely teeming down with rain. Fearing the wrath of London traffic, Kristy and I high-tailed it out of there, and yet we were pleasantly surprised to find the roads flowing quite freely! We made it home only an hour later than Doug (i.e. TomTom) had originally predicted – not bad, given that half-an-hour of that was our lunch break!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend away, and a brilliant introduction to the Lakes. Make sure you check out the rest of the photos – there’s some doozies in there!

We will be spending our lovely four-day weekend in a lovely cottage called Orlestone House, which is in the lovely area of The Lake District. Our lovely friends Stacey and Wes are going to double our fun by joining us too, because the drive time from our place is almost identical to the drive time from their place! Lovely!

Here’s hoping that everyone has a lovely Easter, and that you don’t pork out on too much lovely chocolate. That wouldn’t be so lovely.

As mentioned, we spent our long weekend in Wales, just taking it easy and enjoying a slower pace of life.

Sadly, my D-SLR is playing up at the moment (well actually I suspect it’s the lens), so we didn’t get as many photos as we normally would; lucky we got some video instead!

Time – 4:42, Size: 31.49 MB

For the bank holiday this weekend, wife and I have headed to a log cabin in Caerphilly, Wales. We are without agenda! However, we’re planning on doing a big walk around the countryside, hopefully some mountain-biking, and possibly some castle visiting.

For the moment though, we’re enjoying a lazy morning – coffee and breakfast, with a view.

How’s the serenity… ?