8. Grasmere Common

It’s difficult to find a bright side to the events of our fourth morning. If there was one, then it was probably that the weather could have been as filthy for the whole two weeks as it was that day. At any rate, we took a real beating.

It was still dark when we woke. The rain was rattling down on the canvas and the tent lurched violently in the wind. There was no getting stoves out to make porridge and tea today, and we sheltered in our sleeping bags, eating cereal bars, sipping from our water carriers and waiting for enough light to get on our way.

Outside it was damp and blustery. I got on with folding the flysheet, while Christian unpegged the inner, still rigid with its poles. For a moment he took his hand off the tent to reach the peg bag, and in that second the wind snatched our little home up and whisked it away, cracking me across the back of the neck before flying overhead and cartwheeling at some speed down the valley. There was an awful moment as tired brains worked, adding up the sorry consequences to losing our tent, then both of us dropped what was in our hands and pelted after it down the hillside. I almost got a hold on one of the poles, but slipped on a wet rock and went down hard, then Christian dashed across through some soggy long grass and managed to pin it down.

Between us we dragged the soaking shell and our muddied selves back up to where the bags were, grimly imagining what it would be like to sleep in that night. Ahead of us a leaden fog clung to the mountain, and there was no way to go but through it.

Already a little shaken, we started the long climb up Lining Crag, up a well-built path that crossed and re-crossed a slimy stream. On a bright day I imagine it’s terribly beautiful, but our heads were down and our hoods up. It was when we reached the top of Lining Crag that Christian’s phone, silent now for nearly a whole day in the reception black hole of the valley, began to make noises.

There were three text messages, all sent the day before. One was a heroic little poem from a Welshman, and the other two were from my mum and L, both warning us about gale force winds in the mountains of the Lake District. Such cautions would have been very useful if we’d had reception a day earlier, but as it was we were at the heart of things anyway, and the only way was forward.

We reached the end of the crag that had been sheltering us for the first half hour, and as the tops opened up before us, the weather became vastly more savage. We later discovered that some of the gusts were up to 60mph. Unstable with our packs, they threw us flat into the mud as we splashed through puddles up to our ankles. The rain sheeted across the ridge top, the wind driving it through our frozen chests and arms. Everything was drenched.

Worse, the mist was so thick that navigation became nigh on impossible, and we began to lose the lines of little cairns and fence posts we were supposed to be following. Each time we got the map out it got more and more sodden, and the stinging rain meant we had to keep our hoods pulled low, confining our visibility to little dripping tunnels of Gore Tex. The stumbling and meandering seemed to go on forever.

We started to get ratty with each other, searching in vain for a rusty fence post that was meant to mark our way and arguing over the roar of the storm about whether something was a path or a stream. It turned out it was both, and we followed it down, dodging a seductive valley that led in the wrong direction and miraculously enough finding ourselves back on track.

The rain slackened. Christian fell on his knee in the stream/path and there was a dark moment when we both thought he’d damaged it, but it was just another bruise. A mile further down the valley and the sun was out, sheep nibbled grass by a romantically abandoned bothy, and only the clouds on the mountains bore any testament to the purgatory we had just dragged ourselves through.

We passed a smiley old man with a waxed jacket, flat cap and old frame rucksack. One of those solitary wanderers of whom I greatly approve. He’d just come from the other side of Grasmere, and told us that the way to Patterdale, which we’d hoped to make that day, was all but impassable. Tottering through our sun-drenched valley I don’t think we would have believed him if we hadn’t lately seen for ourselves.

And we were broken anyway. Everything we owned was soaked, and we were shattered after four hours and what can’t have been more than six miles. So we stumbled through the picturesque outskirts and into the centre of Grasmere. It was a pretty place, in spots bordering on being a bit twee, and there was a very different sort of tourist here to the classy walkers of Rosthwaite. There were still macs and packs about, but by and large the boots people wore were those sort of utility trainers you keep for travel and the odd lowland potter rather than rugged hiking ones. There were plenty of little cafes and shops. Grasmere, province of the cream tea brigade.

Not that we minded. It was comfortable, and we craved comfort. There was no campsite in town, so Christian and I took it in turns to go looking for the YHA hostel while the other one sat thawing out in the sun on the village green. When we stopped walking we were all of a sudden very cold and stiff.

I had a message on my phone to call AD, which I did. He was perky and upbeat, telling me he’d got a new job and wouldn’t be at work when I got back. It seemed a bit strange to be chatting away just as usual, and I could see him leaning against the wall outside the office, no doubt in a smart suit and tie, while I sat, sodden and shivering uncontrollably, on a peeling bench on Grasmere green.

7. Rosthwaite

From Seatoller, the way wound through a car park, where the National Trust were recruiting (why this seemed an ideal location I have no idea, but there we go), and through some sparse woods to the chocolate box village of Rosthwaite. There were quite a few people about by now, almost all groups of late middle-aged walkers with little rucksacks and clean clothes, windswept in a smart, cultivated sort of a way. Like everyone else, they all wanted to chat, and some of them had done the Coast to Coast before. They would ask where you were walking to, and you’d say Robin Hood’s Bay and there’d be a sort of understanding. Of course they’d all done it in summer, staying in cosy B&Bs, and thought we were nutters, lugging our dirty great packs through the rain and the cold, but we were already used to that.

I think it was Christian’s idea to go to the pub. It was raining a bit, and after a couple of nights of kipping wild and eating camp food, a pub lunch seemed like a fine reward. We were in that comfortable window where we knew we wouldn’t make Grasmere before dark, but had plenty of time to get to our intended campsite on the outskirts of Rosthwaite, so we ducked into the village hotel for a bite.

It was quite an upmarket hotel, with nicely dressed old ladies sitting in one corner taking tea, more smart walkers with Labradors, and completely incongruous Eastern European bar staff. Christian and I must have looked terrible, but they were welcoming and chatty in that easy, all the time in the world way that country pubs are. The food was solid and warming, and we drank two pints of very good beer, venturing back out onto the road feeling robust and slightly tipsy. We found throughout the two weeks that when you’re working yourself hard all day and burning up just about everything you eat, booze goes right to your head. Which was alright by us.

We crossed the river and began the climb up the valley. A man passed us, and told us our campsite was closed, but we kept on going anyway, keen to get another couple of miles in before dark. Across the river we could see the campsite, totally deserted bar a few sheep, so we pushed on up. Our guidebook mentioned ‘a desolate but lovely hanging valley, an unexpected bowl high up the fellside’ between two pyramid hillocks, and we decided to make for that. By the time we got there we’d be so high up that nobody would bother us about camping wild. Wild camping is technically illegal outside of Scotland, since in England and Wales all land belongs to someone, and you’re supposed to get permission. In practice though, if you’re above a certain height in a national park and camp clean then usually no-one will bother you.

It was a pretty walk up the valley as the wind picked up and the light started to dim. We passed some beautiful swirly waterfalls, one of which was flanked by a patch of long, green grass that would be perfect for a picnic if you were there in a nicer season. But then I suppose if we’d been there in a nicer season then we wouldn’t have had it all to ourselves, which was quite special in itself. The ground got marshier and the grass longer, until up ahead we could see the first of the two neat little hillocks.



‘The breasts of Sheba’, said Christian, prodding his own chest to emphasize his clever analogy. This may be lost on many. I don’t know if anyone watched the Allan Quatermain films with Richard Chamberlain when they were younger, but Christian and I loved them. There was a sequel, The Lost City of Gold, which despite plentiful fighting and crass racial stereotypes (an Arab who was clearly a boot-polished English comedian, and was named ‘Shwarma’ springs to mind) was vastly outdone by the first one, King Solomon’s Mines. We were obsessed with Quatermain, recording the music onto tape to play while we bundled in our room, and as a six year old I discovered that if I punched Christian in the face from a certain angle it made his jaw crack in a similar way to how it did when Quatermain hit people. Christian, as with many of my sadistic childhood whims, didn’t seem to mind this much, but I imagine my mum eventually put a stop to it.

Anyway, in King Solomon’s Mines, the map to the mines is in the form of a small statuette of a buxom goddess, and the treasure itself is located between two hills known as ‘the breasts of Sheba’. So in a sense we were returning to the grounds of our childhood. Two budding Quatermains, missing only the feisty blonde and stoic tribal sidekick.



And it was a lovely spot. We pitched our tent in one place, then realised how windy it was and upped sticks to a more sheltered plot. Despite the wind, it was a nice night, and after supper we lay back on the cold, sloping grass and talked for a bit as we drank our tea. Even in the dark we could see the outline of the path creeping up to the shadowy tops, and it felt a million miles from anywhere.