In Grasmere the sun shone and there was a gentle breeze, and once we got clear of the town we took the still soaking tent out of its bag, separated it into flysheet and inner, and tied one part to the back of each of our rucksacks, stopping every now and then to turn a wetter side out towards the sunshine. It didn’t work, but fortunately later in the day we found a better way to dry our temporary home.
At the top of the valley above Grasmere is a neat but spectacular pass called Grisedale Hause, and the pull up to it was not an easy one. At one point we lost the path just a little, and ended up dragging ourselves up a steep, grassy slope, which in another circumstance would have been perfect for sunbathing. Christian decided that it would be easier to crawl, and maybe it was, but squashed underneath his pack, slithering up the hill, he looked even more like a snail than normal.
It was a pretty enough day for us not to mind the climb, though, and when we’d gained a bit of height we downed bags and perched on the edge of a scar by the path. When we left Glebe Cottage, G had given us each a little foil packet of chocolate slice, and there were two pieces left. We ate our last taste of home gazing down the valley, past layers of mountains rising up in turn, first brown and green with the spidery field boundaries snaking across them, fading to hulking purple shadows on the horizon.
We ate a cereal bar too, and drank some water, to make our snack into elevenses, and Christian climbed up onto a rock next to me. His mind wasn’t on the view.
‘If I was to wee really hard off here I bet I’d be able to hit some of the people in Grasmere.’ There was no mention of why he would want to, and it would have been quite a feat, but anyway he decided against testing his theory.
As we sat there, two blokes came past us. As usual they stopped for a chat, and as usual they’d walked the Coast to Coast once too. In my life I think I’ve only known ten or fifteen people who’ve done it, yet just about every other day walker we encountered along the way seemed to have tramped across the country at some point or other in their lives. Not a bad thing to do, I suppose. One of these two had camped, and he was smug in a friendly sort of way about our rucksacks. We let them get ahead a little, then carried on along our way. Turned out that despite being in one of the most touristy bits of the Lake District they were the only other walkers we would encounter until Patterdale.
Mountain passes are peculiar things. As we threaded our way through Grisedale Hause, we paused to look first one way, then the other. Back the way we’d come the skies were clear, the grass was crispy and the breeze was warm; while in front of us damp gusts swirled up the valley, the sky was overcast and a very gentle drizzle threatened rain. Two next door neighbours with totally different micro-climates.
Bu the rain didn’t come. Whether it was karma from the day before or simple blind luck (and I usually reckon on things being the latter), each time we stopped to put our jackets on, the drizzle slackened off to almost nothing again. It was a slightly bleak sort of a valley, all the same, and thinking back I don’t think I remember ever passing Grisedale Tarn in the sunshine. It’s funny, I’m sure if you spoke to some people they’d associate that same little pool with hot, still days, just because they’d always found it that way, in the same way that I can’t think of it without memories of rain spattering the water’s surface. Life can only be your own experience, I suppose.
The walk down into Patterdale seemed longer than it was, I think because we were hungry and didn’t have any bread for lunch, banking on finding a shop in the village. It was a good walk all the same. Despite it being a little overcast, the weather never broke, and we picked our way down the stony paths and talked about how we might make up the day we’d lost, and where we would stay that night, and about a Hallowe’en party we’d been to the week before where there had been lots of free Sambuca and a small man in a top hat trying to nail me into a coffin on the way in. Christian somehow managed to work a number of David Bowie songs into the conversation. Exchanges with Popy on long walks almost always seem to end with a rendition of either Bowie or Supertramp.
On the outskirts of the village was a pleasant-looking hotel, and we found a corner of the bar to lower the tone with our muddied clothes and scarecrow hair, just across from a young couple dressed in smart woollens, having a nice afternoon tea. We ordered big burgers with chips and pints, and I called the only campsite in Patterdale, where on an answerphone a lady with a lovely accent told me that the site was closed for the winter. So it seemed like we’d be in a hostel for the second night in a row. Practically domesticated.
As we made our way to YHA Patterdale, I began to have a strong sense of déjà vu. One thing about having walked quite a bit in the Lake District as part of bigger groups and being naturally disdainful of maps is that I have been to lots of places and not known their names. A rough fieldy car park looked greatly familiar, and I realised that I’d once parked up there in Tigger, my beautiful plum and custard 2CV. It was the same trip in which WRM and I had failed to make it up Black Crag, and we’d redeemed ourselves the next morning by climbing up Helvellyn. My little car hadn’t half struggled with some of the mountain roads (one particularly savage one called Kirkstone Pass springs to mind, where we spent the better part of 20 minutes in first gear), but the tricksy combination of man, machine and mountain had at least cleared my head of the foolish amount of whisky I’d drunk the night before.
As we arrived at the YHA, three men unpacking a car in the driveway told us it wasn’t open for another hour and a half (more of these gentlemen later), so we followed them down to the village pub. We stopped en-route, and Christian squashed into a phone box to call G and L, while I stocked up on exciting things in the shop and chased a lady with a pram who’d left her post on the counter. I found one of those chocolate puddings that you boil up in the tin, and squirreled it away behind the sleeping bag at the bottom of my rucksack for if things ever got dark.
