Lake District

Hello everyone!

This morning I slept right through until 8am - my bed was sooo comfortable!!

We got up and had breakfast. It was a full English breakfast including sausage, bacon, eggs, mushroom, tomato and black pudding (I left that part - had it before and not a fan!!!). Everything was delicious. 

We then set off to Glenridding under instruction from our B&B's owner, Dean. Glenridding is quite a cute little town! We parked our car and began our - what was supposed to be - 4-5 hour walk up Helvellyn, a 3,118 ft high mountain. 

The walk was beautiful! It started off with us getting a bit lost as there was no signage. We ran into two couples, one kiwi and one English, and we all worked together to find out which way to go at the start. 

We started off walking up a hill on a smooth path with cute rock walls next to us. After a couple of hours, the walk got really hard. It was then that dad decided to reveal to us that, oh yes, this walk is graded as "hard, with mild rock climbing". Oh good! We reached some ridges where we had to climb up (and up and up!!) and finally reached the top of the hill. It was hard but worth it! 

We enjoyed the view of the lake down in the crater and continued along the top. We eventually ended up with a choice - a shorter rocky way down to climb or a really long smooth and flat part. We picked the short rocky part, and so did a rowdy school group who had a kid in it with a broken arm!!! It didn't end up being as bad as we thought. But the fun didn't end there, we still had another hour or two left of rocky paths. 

I really enjoyed the views and it was lovely, but for some reason my shoes hurt worse than the Inca Trail and my knees hurt today too. I was a bit over it by the end because it took 6 hours instead of 4-5! Never mind. 

Got to the bottom (finally!!) and my feet hurt even worse than the inca trail somehow. I hadn't strapped them as well as I did in January because I'm running out of tape. Took my shoes off and I have some awful blisters, so walked barefoot to the ice cream shop. Had a delicious ice cream!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon driving around. The weather was fantastic! We are in the wettest part of England but today we were treated to some rare sunshine which made the area even more stunning than it already was. Took some lovely photos and saw Kirkstone Pass where mum and dad stopped in 1990. We stopped at Castlerigg stone formation which is 4500 years old. Then we drove down the struggle, a really narrow country road through Ambleside. 

Got back to our B&B and I played with the dog, Arnie. So cute!! Then went for dinner at the restaurant over the road. Had a delicious trout dish and then Brendon and I shared a sticky toffee pudding for dessert - was amazing!!! 

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox