Saturday 12th March: walking in the Lake District, a nice dinner

[ here are all the pictures I took this day: https://picasaweb.google.com/110144623598348247797/20110312?authkey=Gv1sRgCNPV17TFgereBA#  ]


We woke up a little before 8 on Saturday, ate some food, then got ready to go walking. The bus took us quite far. The streets were very narrow in parts so the bus driver had a big challenge. The road was barely wide enough for two cars in opposite directions. So a big coach bus and a car was a problem. Even bigger problem was when another bus came from the oncoming direction. Some large chunks of road had fallen away due to rain erosion. The scenery from the bus was very amazing. The mountains aren't huge compared to the alps in Europe, but they look like smaller proper mountains rather than the Peak District which are more like nice hills. Some of the mountains had snow on top! Amazing.

First view of a snow topped mountain from the bus. I was quite amazed. It probably can't be seen very well, but it is seen on the hill in between the other two.

We started by walking through this awesome valley.

There are lots of streams coming down from the hills. They are partly from the melting snow.

Looking back through the valley we just came through.

There is some nice snow on this mountain.

Now we have to climb up this hill.

We got to the top and it levelled out into some boggy land. We had lunch here, and then the 'leaders' decided that we would cut out some of our planned route. We would have gone down again, and then up higher again. It was felt that the day was fairly wet and mushy and so it would not be ideal for long slogs of walking.

We made a detour across an expanse of very mushy ground. Then we had to cross this river!

After crossing the river we had to climb up a bit of a hill, heading toward the summit. Some of the others were finding it a bit tiring, so I'm looking down at them and glimpses of view through the fog.

I found some snow!

Eating the snow.

We came into some thicker cloud or fog as we ascended. It had an awesome atmosphere.

The summit. It was quite windy here. So we took some shelter in a little rock arrangement and ate some snacks. I think we're at about 700 metres here. +/- 50m maybe. So not really high, but still satisfying.

After that summit we walked along for a bit to a different summit that was close by.

Here we are at the next summit. Very thick fog!

We began a descent off the top. I don't think it came out in this photo, but the descent was basically endless big stone steps. It was hard going for some of shorter and more tired people.

A frog!

A lake! Very thick fog when we arrived, so we could hardly tell there was a lake at all.

Down again. This time beside a kind of stream going down the side of the mountain. Very nice scenes.

I was trailing at the back because I was enjoying the scenes. Ahead of me it became apparent that the leader was trying to find a place to cross this stream! The water was quite violent up here, so I thought it would be really cool. But they decided it wasn't feasible.

The place where the crossing was proposed.

Down again. Almost at the bottom.

Some people are climbing up through the water on some kind of 'adventure' expedition.

We got back to the pub and had a beer. Everyone had arrived except for the other group four. The walk I did was walk 4. But there were lots of people interested in walk 4, so it got broken into two groups. My group of 9 did the walk in reverse, while the other group 4 of 11 people did it forwards.

After a little while we left the pub and waited on the bus, thinking they would arrive shortly. The bus originally was planned to leave by 16:30 with all walks returned. The time rolled on and they still did not appear. Trying to call them was ineffectual since the steep valleys meant that phone reception was not present.Some of the committee members went for a run along the route they were expected to return by, hoping to find them. They went quite a long way but found nothing. The time continued and there was some helplessness about what could be done. It was mentioned that after 18:30 they would call the mountain rescue to see what they would suggest and if they could help in trying to locate them. It started to get dark a bit before 18:00, and a little past 18:00 it was completely black. Then some voices were heard which were known to belong to people on walk 4. They had arrived back! It turned out that they did the entire walk 4 whereas my group 4 cut off a large section. After that they were committed to completing the entire walk which then turned out take a lot longer than expected, due to the weather conditions etc.

We went back to the hostel and everyone put on their suits for the dinner. It is an annual event for the club that for one of the weekends away they all dress up in suits and go out to dinner. At the other weekends away they cook in the hostel kitchen.

I was feeling a little embarassed that I had nothing like that to wear since they all wore some pretty good looking suits. But Paul, a guy from Belgium, and some others had no suits as well. Eventually I didn't worry so much.

The dinner was at a hotel in the town, in a separate room. The meal was good. There were a few interesting conversations over dinner. There is another australian girl on this trip. She is from Mackay in Queensland. I talked with a guy from china about communism and all that stuff. He was really open about it so it was an interesting conversation.

After dinner, they put some music on and had some kind of disco dance floor set up. A few of the other people had fun dancing, but I'd describe it more as girating with occasional random thrusts. I don't think it has anything on proper swing dancing. I kept talking to some people from my table for a while.

We walked back to the hostel and a few of the others continued to drink for a bit and played giant jenga. I'd just had a little beer during dinner. After a little while everyone went to bed.