England Diaries - Part VII

We're in the Lake District in England, climbing Cats Bell. It rains something like 275 days a year in the Lake District but the day we've set aside to go hiking, we have sun. We're psyched.

We start the climb to the top of this tall peak. Except when we get to the top, we see another taller peak just up the trail. Fine. We climb that. Then--hey! There's another peak. We climb that. You can see how this went...it was us against the  mountain.  Care to guess who won?

At some point as we were climbing--oh, let's say the 3rd peak--it started misting. By the 4th peak it was a steady rain and by the time we reached the last peak (the last we were willing to climb, that is) it was windy enough to almost blow me over and there was hail.  

It was worth it for the view though. This photo isn't even all the way on top of the climb but given the hail, those photos are a bit dark so you get this one instead. 

We climbed down which was a heck of a lot harder than climbing up had been. Wet, slippery rocks. It was so steep at crumbly at some points that we just scooted down on our butts at some places.  And again--no warning or danger signs! Just nature.  It was great.

So we climb down and realize the whole climb up and back took under 2 hours.  Now what? I'll tell you now what. This is the part of the trip where my husband turned on me and took me on a forced 7-mile walk around the lake.  See the lake in the picture? That's what we circumvented.  And the picture doesn't begin to show the full scope of the lake. It was a very looong lake.

Things didn't get bad until the last mile or two. My feet were tired by then. And I never was convinced Blair actually knew where we were going. He told me "just a little further," about an hour and half before we came anywhere near the end of the trail, so I remained suspicious.

But the lake walk was some of the prettiest hiking we did. Once off Cats Bell, we came into full sun. We tied our jackets around our waist, snacked on nuts and just walked. Here are some pictures from our walk: