15.3.08

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.

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