The Lake District - Day 2

Our day started off with a lovely breakfast prepared by Sue. With full bellies we left the house and walked down to the lake to catch the 9:45 launch (boat shuttle) to Hawes End pier to begin our however many miles hike up to Catbells. They say it's about 3.5 miles long. Somewhere we took a wrong turn coming back down and added another mile or so to the trip. And the walk from our B&B to the lake is about 3/4 of a mile so there's another 1.5 miles roundtrip added to the mix. Nuff said. We're riding in a touring van tomorrow. No hiking. :) Anyway ... The ride over to Hawes End was brisk and beautiful. I think we were on the trail a little after 10am. It started off fairly easy - but we weren't deceived. We knew it wouldn't be like that for long. It wasn't. But the views were breathtaking. I was stopping to snap photos around every corner. Of course when I look at them now a lot of them are very similar. There was some culling going on tonight. LOL But you never know when that particular image is going to be THE one. One of the beauties of digital.

Not far from here I pulled out the tripod and got a couple of us with these incredible backdrops. 

We were about a hour into the hike at this point and rested a bit - and y'all wonder why I stop to take so many photos. Ummmm, it's my way of taking a break!! Good thing because we needed to recharge for the most difficult part of the climb. There are two peaks to climb. The first one wasn't too bad ... but the second one was challenging to say the least. Close to the top there wasn't a path to follow. It was all rocks and gravel. It's what we call scrambling. I'll tell you, the whooping crane didn't do too badly. He's got a stride the size of a limo. My little Dachshund legs struggle. Where the whooping crane (and I'm not being ugly, he calls himself this) can just hike his leg up and keep on stepping, hell I'm on my hands and knees to get there. Not kidding. It was no small victory getting to the top!! Our awesome breakfast that Sue fixed us was long gone. She also packed us a wonderful lunch to go and we planted right there at the top of the fell to enjoy it. Most of the others did the same thing. Here are our views during lunch today. 

Not too shabby, eh? Oh and another thing - this is a much more dog friendly country than ours. I can't tell you how many people brought their dogs along. The launches have signs saying they welcome dogs, the stores welcome dogs, even the pubs welcome dogs. It's amazing. And just imagine this, they all get along!! It's a very cool thing. 

Somehow we got turned around (the signs posting the path are non-existent), but we eventually made it back to another launch. Not the one we thought we were going to but any launch was welcome at this point. While going up was challenging, coming down gets the knees and ankles creaking ... And they were yelling pretty loudly by then. The launch was late and it was after 4:00 by the time we made it back to the Keswick pier.

Would you like to guess where we were headed next? If you guessed to a pub, you'd be correct!!! BUT along the way guess what we found? Hehehehehe. (I forgot to take a pic but will do so tomorrow and insert it.) Just a litte place called Needles and Pins. A YARN SHOP!!!!!! I had googled it so I knew there was one here somewhere but hadn't seen it yet. Yeah I went in!!! Yeah I got some wool!!! The only type of sheep that survive the winters here are called Herwick sheep. Here's more info on them if you're interested - http://www.herdwick-sheep.com. There was a sign on the door saying they had Herdwick wool. <insert big fat cheesy grin here> Here's the sheep (they're all over the place here ... Kinda like dogs):

And here's my wool:

This is the natural color of the wool. They didn't have any dyed, but I didn't care. I was stoked!! Will be playing with this when we get home. 

George's came highly recommended by a couple of different folks so that's where we stopped to grab a pint. And then dinner. And another pint - well another for Bob, I had a glass of wine instead. The food was superb. They are famous for their pies, so Bob had the Steak Pie and I ordered the Farmhouse Pie (chicken and lots of veggies). As wonderful as the food was, OMG, our company the next tables over was even better. The couple on the end are from a town south of London, actually not far from South Hampton where we're headed on Friday. She was a stitch and a half. The table next to us was a father and son, dad was 84 and I'm guessing Peter was about our age. They are from a town north of here. We had the north and south battle going and it was hysterical! Between the lady two tables down and Peter next to us we were raising the roof hooting and laughing so hard. It's a wonder we didn't get kicked out. (So yes, I have issues behaving even 4,000 miles away.) It was a perfect ending to a beautiful day. Turning 54 isn't so bad!!

Tune in tomorrow - I'm sure the saga will continue!!