Lost in Britain’s best National Park

That time of year and I start my annual, weekly pilgrimage to Ullswater.

In many ways I’m loathe to say how divine it is, its beauty being a particular lack of the regular visitors to the likes of Bowness (rolls eyes in distaste) or Ambleside (prays readers love Apple Pie House).

It is where much of the lost blog has taken place over the years and where I do much of my thinking about what to do next at newroomsonline. I took my best friend and her family as we’ve never done the walk before together and I’m really keen to share my love of the fells with my godsons in a way which is more than a mere account of where I’ve walked.

This is the gatepost to Ullswater Steamers – where the magic begins! Look carefully or you’ll miss the colour matched accessory – the fingerless glove.

We sailed from Glenridding to Howtown aboard the delightful and best vessel in their fleet – The Lady of the Lake.

When the light catches the surface of the lake on the last sail home, it’s like glitter floating…you really can’t beat it at all. We watched the Wammels tacking and gybing around Norfolk Island, folk out in canoes and kayaks from Glenridding Sailing Centre and of course, I pointed out the path that we would be treading – all 7 miles of it.

We also made use of the cake stand in the new pierhouse…..which I might add is looking stunning. Doesn’t seem too long ago that the whole village was swamped in the 2010 storms. Well done, Guys, a stunning job. I had a particularly divine millionaire’s shortbread.

Howtown always makes me start humming Pet Clark’s Downtown and always feel they should play it over the PA as you alight! There’s not a lot there…but there is a pub, and a nice beach for a picnic with more breathtaking views across the lake.

It’s a great walk. You can’t get lost, it’s well signposted and as my godson, George, noted, “Everyone’s always so friendly in the Lakes aren’t they? Everyone says hello.”

It’s one thing I’ve said often to my folks but I don’t think it’s just the Lakes. I think there’s a bonding between people who like the outdoors. Doesn’t matter if you pass a walker, a mountain biker or a climber, people always nod or stop to chat.

Three hard Geordie boys passed us on their mountain bikes with the muddiest, wet arses imaginable…and it was a really mild, dry day…..between us we asked why mountain bikers never use mudguards?

A few miles later we passed them again as they sat down to eat their butties and asked, “Why no mudguards?”

Apparently it’s just a preference. “Is it like a trophy? Having a really dirty backside?” I asked.

“I guess so,” came the response. I remarked that it must chafe as a result….no because padded cycling shorts ensure this does not happen….great blokes.

George had a bit of a vertigo wobble at one point. Having been gungho the whole walk, he only got nervous after I’d had to make an unplanned stop behind a gorse bush….ouch, and he’d time to think about how high he was off the ground at that point…which to be fair is probably the highest point on the walk but funny that he’d been fearless up to that moment. Mental note….don’t stop no matter how desperate you are!

We found a dead swan at Sandwick bay which I find terribly sad, nesting season and all the pairs out.

I called Tourist Info at Glenridding the following morning, simply because I had it in mind that you’re meant to report dead swans…isn’t it still a treasonable offence to kill one? That and sticking a stamp on a letter the wrong way up? LOL

Incidentally Cumbria police called me this morning to get an exact location of the swan so it must be important!

No more losses until we got to just above Side Farm…about mile no. 5.

I am assuming someone took these off for a paddle and forgot about them!

Last but not least, actually on the stile at Side Farm Camp Site…

Pointing the way home….

I woke up on Sunday, as ever, these days post any kind of activity feeling ancient with creaking bones and aching muscles. I don’t have bunions but feel like I should, that joint at the base of my big toe is more painful than I can describe. I slept badly, more proof that despite what people say about exercise leading to a sound night’s sleep, it’s all a load of rubbish!

Anyway do the walk – it’s lovely!

Finding yourself in the Lakes!

So anyway back on the current trail to lose weight, I took advantage of it being half term and went on a walk on Sunday with my husband, best mate, her husband and two godsons, Ollie and George – the apples of my eye.

You really couldn’t meet two more perfect children but never having been walking with them before I had no idea if they’d be bored, if they’d be shattered….or if they’d take to it like a duck to water….added to which I’ve not really done a proper walk in ages. David is a gym bunny, Gillie is naturally fit (how annoying) and Mark is a footballer so if there was a fitness fly in the ointment it was me….no surprise then that I chose a good, easy walk I’d done in the past……punctuated half way round by the appearance of the Lake District’s best cake shop, Chesters.

Park in Elterwater……head left out of village car park and turn right up the hill just past a small hotel…….walk about 2 miles, stop and take photo of lost pair of socks (what??)

The author shoots the socks in the Lakeland Laundromat!

The joy of being out and about with @markymarkf is that he could shoot me shooting the socks!

Walking socks stuck in Langdale wall!

At this point it is important to say that our navigator was George. He did a fine job. It’s not until you start explaining walks to someone that you realise how easy it was all those times to have walked up a sheep trail thinking it was the path!

Telling George not just to read the description of the route but observe the actual footpath signs was quite ironic given the number of times I’ve led my mate miles in the wrong direction!

Grabbing a shot of that lost glove at Stang End

The end of the wall for this glove!

Yes that is snow!

Past Stang End we headed across more farmland into woodland then down to Colwith Bridge. Across farmland and down towards Skelwith Bridge we decided against cakes until we were back at the car and the walk over.

Elterwater is delightful. If you’re not a walker, if you have a baby buggy, if you have a dog….it’s just the perfect setting. There’s the backdrop of the Langdales and it’s just beautiful.

Scarlet on a mossy mound!

Well done to George for superb skills, faultless on the first attempt…..you don’t know what you’ve let yourself into! Ollie’s up next time – I have high expectations young man!

Bob turns his hand to dry stone walling!

Can we find it? Yes we can!

Stormy weather not on this horizon - no need for wellybobs!

OK so I had to park about a mile ahead of this item in order to walk back to photograph it. Just outside Clappersgate on the way to Elterwater I spotted this Bob the Builder welly – some poor mite probably howled all the way home as a result of this loss. Ain’t it cute?

I was headed to Elterwater to do a favourite ciurcular route of mine, not least because aside from a real feast of Lakeland views, you get to take in the full force of the water at Skelwith Bridge where the water is a fabulous turquoise-green as it flows over the slate. You can feast your heart out at Chesters with any number of their divine cakes and puddings, and still walk back alongside the serene, and petite, Elterwater.

There’s also a small retail area, which I love, but then I would as newroomsonline and Chesters have many suppliers in common!

It’s a truly beautiful walk. Park in Elterwater National Trust car park and head out of it to the left. You can follow a path up and off to your right which takes you over a very gentle mound with the Langdales screaming overhead to your right. You drop down through a farm and meet a road which you walk along to your left until you come across a hole in the hedge on the right and make your way across another meadow and down towards the woods where you walk along side the swelling river…sometimes a dreamy little trickle, others a raging torrent not to be messed with!

You just keep following the path through meadows and across roads until you end up back at Skelwith Bridge where you can then walk alongside the river back in the opposite direction, then following Elterwater’s edge back to the car park. I don’t know maybe it’s about 2-3 hours walk but it’s simply lovely, especially if you’re not really a fell walker but want the Lakes experience!

Enjoy!

Anything to keep Mother Nature karm!

Ah this was a blissful day. I went off walking with some great chums from Glenridding Sailing Centre. Steve, in his infinite South African wisdom, managed to say one thing that has ruined walking for me forever more……evidently one is never supposed to do a circular walk anti-clockwise as Mother Earth gets all out of kilter and it’s bad karma! Bloody hippies!

So for the ensuing 4 years I’ve only done clockwise walks regardless of how inconvenient that route can be!

It’s a favourite haunt of mine – Grisedale just south of Patterdale…not to be confused with the Grizedale Forest. The Grisedale valley is just fantastic. Sometimes it’s so quiet it’s magical…mostly it’s just torrential and the tops of the fells hang with low cloud from Nethermost Cove and Dollywaggon Pike.

It’s quite a gentle plain until you start to climb and before you know you’ve gained quite a bit of height…then there’s this bothy type hut whose name I’ve totally forgotten…something like Ruthwaite Lodge pronounced Ruthut or something similar…anyway..you get there and think this is it…and still isn’t!

You just think you’re nearing the tarn at the end of the path when another mile comes into view…it’s like the episode of the Simpsons when Homer’s climbing Mount Springfield! You never seem to get there.

Once you reach the tarn (Grisedale Tarn) you just want to throw yourself in…or make camp or go for a swim…quite like the idea of wild swimming, in fact I’m a bit obsessed with it though nervous of where to try, having only yet managed Black Moss pot in the Langstrath Valley…if you’re going to start somewhere I can’t think of a better place.

Back to the sorry little lost glove – isn’t she adorable, all snuggly and striped?

Gummed up instructions to drive you up the wall!

Big Fat Frozen Hand on the How

Spot the Lake

We set out a few weeks back to do a circular walk up Gummers How. We usually follow walks either from Trail magazine or from a walking book but on the odd occasion we’ve downloaded a walk from walking britain or the great outdoors….and DISASTER….read on.

Finding the car park is easy, it’s just on the main road half way up the hill. Gummers How is easily seen from the road and is a hop skip and a jump over the road but the walk we’d downloaded took you away from the fell in a southerly direction then east and back west to the summit.

Our problem was finding the start of the walk!

It’s not like we’re stupid. We’ve been walkers for years and the Lakes is our back yard for all intents and purposes. The problem was that it stated the path was clearly signposted towards Staveley 500 m down the road from the car park. Well we went 500m and found what could have been a path but not signposted. Fair enough signs rot and fall over so we followed the path. It wasn’t anything which lead anywhere other than into a forest.

Pretty but pretty wrong.

We came back out onto the road and walked a further 500m down the road and found another path heading into the woods. We followed that this time for much longer until it too led nowhere other than to managed felling areas. We returned to the road walked a bit further then headed back to the car – now 1 and a half hours into a walk which hadn’t yet started and decided we’d head for Grizedale while there was still some light to enjoy the day. A guy in the car park suggested we just walk up Gummers How the easy route and 40 minutes later we were on the summit, but not before we’d seen this fella on the wall.

I love gloves like this. They remind me of my Grandad and more recently my Dad. Not that he wears them but he has that statesmanliness that would lead you to suspect he does, he should, instead of fighting rheumatism! But I’m as stubborn so I can’t complain!

It was an OK walk but we were all deflated. I should have known things were going to be rough. When we arrived in the Lakes I realised I’d left my coat and all waterproofs at home! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE????

Thanks God the sailing season starts soon, I’ve had good practice at being wet!

The sign we found as we left...some way more than 500m south of the car park!

Colour co-ordinated rubbish!

I like the way this glove actually blends with the scenery – a thoughtful loss for sure.

It also reminded me of a pair of gloves I’d had as a schoolgirl when colour co-ordination was all. This is not because of any fashion statement but the rigours of the school’s uniform policy.

It was a strange place for uniform –  and as an adult I’m not sure as a parent I would have been quite so compliant as my parents and others were. There were daft rules like girls below 6th Form age were not allowed to wear duffle coats – not freezing to death didn’t seem to take precedent over the privelege. We argued annually for a sweatshirt to add to the games kit, the old windcheaters weren’t as warming but were told young ladies didn’t wear sweatshirts. We had to wear brown knickers, plain not ribbed (I don’t even know what that means to this day) with our name tag in the back….I mean when would you be losing them???? When could you expect your trolleys to be featuring on a blog about lost clothing???

A strange old place and now a Barratt housing development so I guess somewhere down the line the rules lost out to common sense and it lost trade! Who knows. I look back and think it a dreadful shame that it’s now full of ‘designer’ rooms you truly couldn’t swing a cat in, those old corridors were fab, wonderful floor tiles, you could stamp your feet and listen to the echoes, the walls wooden pannelled and the quadrangles my aspiration to walk around!

But back to the glove, I’m not sure where it was taken, chances are that as nine times out ten I’m in and around Ullswater that it’s there but I can’t vouch for it! But it’s lovely isn’t it? I’d miss it.

All fingers point to Martindale!

These are the kinds of lost pics I love, where someone has thought to place the discarded garment in a prominent place, and here almost pointing its own way home!

This is Martindale in the Lakes, and is a magical valley as far as I’m concerned. It’s largely always devoid of anyone else, quiet and peaceful, with only the sheep and the birds for company – magical. The best way to get there is to take a Steamer from Pooley Bridge or Glenridding to Howtown and to take the path to your right which heads to the lakeside walk. As soon as you reach the top of the first steps, however, in effect a walker’s T-junction, turn left, away from the lake shore.

This take you round the flanks of Hallin Fell (a lovely digression for an hour up to its summit is well advised for the views across the lake in all directions) and then you reach the road. Martindale is sign posted once you hit the road and follow it.

I once walked through Martindale and up on to Boredale Hause and dropped back down into Patterdale and as I got up to the Hause I sat on a rock to eat my butties looking back out over the valley I’d just walked. It was beyond fabulous. It was God’s discoteque! It was one of those days with a good breeze, a bright sun but sporadic clouds peppering the sky. And the result was light and dark patches racing across the chequer board of fields below me and it just reminded me of the dancefloor in Saturday Night Fever!

So if you can’t get out for a walk through Martindale this weekend at least veg on the couch to Saturday Night Fever – Aaaaal Pacinooooo! Bop yo ass off!

The real ‘face’ of Andalucia?

When I’m not filling my free time with walks in Cumbria I do like to holiday on the Costa del Sol. Visitors to my Flickr stream will know how true that is, customers of newroomsonline will, equally, be in doubt – the delightful goodies by Jordi Labanda and Agatha Ruiz were the basis for the business!

But this is the ‘face’ of Spain that I always try to deny exists. Beyond the drunken girls who can cast their trollies aside with gay abandon lies a Spain which you’d die for. Endless meadows, fields of sunflowers, whitewashed villages packed with the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered in Europe (well may be the Greeks can match them) and food you just can’t help but scoff. The contrast between the coast and literally half a mile inland is huge.

These effects were strewn over a variety of succulents overlooking Estepona Port. Every Sunday it holds a rambling rastro (market) which is packed with the classic fakes but also a great selection of original ceramics, linen clothing, lithographs and delightful hats. There literally is something for everyone – but if all you want to do is watch the world go by then get yourself a prime seat on the front at Reinaldo’s and observe all with a nice coffee and a shot of Pedro Ximenez!

Blending in with the scenery!

I really like this photo because it looks like Winter beyond the obvious – I mean you feel wintry just looking at it. As a child, teenager….and even an adult I loved and continue to love eating snow and the best way is always sucking your woolly gloves after building a snowman…sick huh?

Well it’s also quite a colour co-ordinated pic and it beckons you in and anyway it’s up Boredale Hause which is one of my most favourite places in the world.

As long as you don’t have to then trek beyond and upwards to the summit of Place Fell, the fell, that is, the Mount Springfield of Cumbria, then it’s a wonderful place to regard Patterdale below to one side and across and down into Martindale down the other side. You turn one way you’re going up Place Fell, you turn the other you’re walking out towards Angle Tarn Pikes and it’s just the best viewing place to look all the way over to the Helvellyn range.

I am sooo biased. And best of all you can spy the Inn on the Lake where the absolute best toasted teacakes in the world form a part of the absolute best afternoon tea in the world (except maybe the one at the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok).

Fancy a walk this weekend anyone?

Taking a snoodz in Grisedale!

It must look like Cumbria’s awash with lost stuff – I honestly don’t go up there and just hang random personal effects at jaunty angles for the benefit of the camera.

This snood, I think that’s what they’re called, was hanging over the gate as you enter the Grizedale Valley just above Patterdale. It’s confusing because it’s not the Grisedale everyone associates with the sculpture trail and the forest but the valley leading up towards Dollywaggon Pike and Fairfield….a stunning valley. In fact it becomes more stunning the graver the weather. Obviously it’s wonderful on a sunny day but when the clouds loom, there’s a really sinister gloom and it’s very dramatic.

Interesting that it says Please Shut The Gate on the gate, as I was up there over New Year and you physically couldn’t shut the gate due to the massive weight of snow – you have to wonder where all the sheep went?

I’ve no idea what make it was I just liked the way it’s colour seemed to blend with the hues in the gate!