Just as I tend to do every winter over the New Year, I headed off to the Lake District to go walk over some of the most beautiful hills in the country. Unlike every winter the trains went from bad to non-existent over the Christmas break. This meant our fearless leader started his week at 6:00am to get back to London in time to meet the rest of us at the student union. Luckily he was the only one to experience difficulties (we all walked) and all of us were on our way by 11:30am. With lots of traffic, shopping and picking people up we finally arrived at Hudscales barn at 10:30pm.
To our delight the barn had been completely redone. It had new mattresses, all the better to sleep on. New shower, all the better to get clean in and two heaters, all the better to stop us freezing our asses off in the morning.
We woke on Monday morning to a clear blue sky and thought about doing Striding Edge. However when we left the barn it was obvious it was going to be too windy so we ascended Helvellyn via Whiteside instead. Upon reaching the ridge the wind kindly made a solid wall of the air around us and blew Pete’s brand new hat right over the edge. It tremendous effort to even walk forward and our faces quickly went numb from the ice getting blown at us. We descended via Dollywaggon Pike, down Grisdale valley. We got back to the minibus at Glenridding nicely tired after a superb and frosty first day.
Monday saw Erik as our first casualty due to a cold. The rest of us headed to Hawes End along very icy road. Just before the car park Phil skilfully drove over one sheet of ice on a ridiculously sharp bend only to be faced by a second, bigger one. Deciding that he had pushed his luck far enough we parked up on the side of the road and walk from there. We made our way up Skelgill Bank to Cat Bells. When we looked back at the minibus we were treated to the sight of a blue Metro doing a majestic 180o spin on the patch of ice Phil had refused to drive over. We made our way up the long ridge to High Spy and down to Daleshead Tarn for lunch. The weather was clear with little wind and the lunch stop was the most pleasant we have had in a long time. We then made our way up and over Hindscarth, and headed back to the bus. The ice had melted and the way back was uneventful.
On Wednesday we were once again greeted by nice weather. After two days of hard walking Muppet and I wanted an easier day, and Alex wanted to look at the sales in Ambleside. We split into two groups with one group heading up to Grasmere for a long walk and the other heading to Ambleside. The weather was too nice not to walk so we left Ambleside and headed up to Red Screes. This turned out to be a nice walk up a ridge with more false summits than you can shake a stick at. We also found ourselves on the wrong side of a stone wall and had to scramble through a dog hole to get to the other side. My knee by this point was hurting quite a lot and crawling through the stone hole proved to be one of the hardest moments of the trip for me! Red Screes turned out to be a lovely mountain standing on its own with great views. The walk down was nice and gentle and did us all the world of good. Pete then managed to replace his lost hat for a third of the cost of the original in the sales.
As it was New Years Eve our fearless leader decided to run the day walk from the barn so we would get back earlier for the pub. The weather was beginning to change and we used the shelters at lunchtime. Ross thought we looked stupid and ate out side by himself. This turned out to be a very silly mistake as Phil’s watch altimeter rose twenty meters in the space of half and hour. In case your wandering this means the weather’s about to turn nasty, very nasty. By the time lunch was finished Ross was cold and swore next time he would look daft with the rest of us. We made it back to the barn before the weather broke. We had sausages and mash to prepare ourselves for the pub. By this time the foul weather had hit and we looked out into a full-blown blizzard. I voted "no" on the proposal to walk the 40 minutes to the pub but was over-ridden by the rest of the group. So off we ventured into fierce winds, icy roads, snow, sleet, and total darkness. We made it to the Old Crown pub quite a bit worse for wear. This is the only time our waterproofs got wet on the entire trip and the sleet melted it's way straight through! We settled down to pints of lovely ale and lots of games of Pool. The pub also sold pie and pees from the local butcher, I had to helpings. Unsurprisingly the power then went out and we were plunged into candle light for the rest of the evening. Luckily the taps were hand pulled and most of our group continued their journey toward total drunkeness. By the time we left the pub the storm had blown its self out. However this was not before it brought down the power line to our barn and a 400 year-old oak across our drive-way.
At 4am I was sick as a dog. I woke up encased in my sleeping bag with the realisation that I was going to yack big-time. I undid the zippers just in time to bound across the freezing tiles (no heaters with no power) and pray over great mother porcelain. It was then that I had two realisations. First, I noticed that I wasn't suffering from a hangover. No headache just violently nauseaous. Second, I noticed that I could no longer feel my feet and that I was kneeling in my boxers next to a toilet in what was probably around zero degrees. Suddenly someone was knocking on the door to use the toilet. I wandered out and must of looked like death warmed over because Lester's first response was to take two steps back. Anyhow, I ambled back to my sleeping bag shivering all the way and went back to sleep.
In the morning we got up late and Andrew, Pete and Alex cooked bacon and egg butties for everyone else for breakfast. I had plain toast. The farmer had cleared the tree from the drive by early afternoon but it would take the next two days to fully restore power. Deciding by this point there was no reason to do a walk we headed to the tourist zone "Rheged" to have a look at the Everest exhibition there. We watched "Everest" on the Imax cinema and looked at the exhibition of Everest artifacts on display before heading back to the barn.
Friday was our final day of walking and once again we were blessed by good weather. To make the most of the day we made our sandwiches the night before and got up at 6:00am. We drove as far up the Langdale valley as we could before parking next to the Old Hotel. Once again we split into two groups, again with me and my dodgey knee in the slow group. We made our way over a number of hills and when we reached Ore Gad we met up with the fast group who had been bounding all over the place and taken a perilous icy climb down a cliff face that they really had no business climbing down. We then went over Crinkle Crags and Great Knot, back into the valley and along to the pub. Our walking for the holiday ended in an old fashioned pub that served good beer and even better soup.
On Saturday we packed up and headed back to our respective homes for some well-earned rest.