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Time: 8.75h. Up: 1295m. Down 1295m.
Distance: 26km. Difficulty: hard Day 2: Ennerdale Bridge (100m) to Rosthwaite (100m) Bad news: Oliver tossed and turned and groaned and sweated buckets with a fever all night… he won’t be coming on the hike today. One down, six to go. More bad news: it is pouring with rain. We had planned to split into two groups today. Group A would leave earlier and take a longer more difficult roller-coaster route along a ridge over a sequence of peaks. Group B would leave later and then meet up with A at the Honister Mines tea-rooms (only in England could you find tea-rooms at a mine). But the guidebooks say not to bother going the long route if the weather is bad! What to do, what to do?? We decide to stick with the original plan. Maybe the weather will clear up? Dave, Sally, Russ, and I set off after I’ve suggested to Group B (Miles and Dad) that they should leave about 45 minutes later than us. I want to minimize the waiting time of whichever group should get to the tea-rooms first (if the weather stays bad and we don’t go via the ridge, it will be us, otherwise it will be them). First navigational error: we turn right on a path a couple of hundred yards too early. Not to worry – we can pass by a cottage and then turn left to rejoin the correct path. A woman in the cottage sees us – the path passes through her garden. This is typical for England where rights of way are sacred and are rarely if ever changed for such unimportant reasons as houses being built on top of them. I suppose she is lucky the path doesn’t go through her kitchen. She asks where we are going. We tell her and she says, in a broad Cumbrian accent, “It’s a bit mookie.”, and cackles. Mookie? We press on. Ah, mucky. And it is. Some time later, walking along a slippery stone path next to Ennerdale Water, rain continuing, we pause for a few seconds. Looking back I see Dave standing, and then Dave is suddenly on his back, backpack beneath him, with his arms and legs in the air, doing his best Gregor Samsa cockroach imitation. This will not be the last time that Dave falls (although he will continually claim that he has not in fact fallen), and the number of Dave’s near-falls will be without number. Dave has not brought good shoes. Dave’s shoes have poor ankle support and they slip on rocks. There are lots of rocks on the C2C. Lots and lots. Poor Dave. Dave’s primary concern, however, on getting up, is not whether or not he has broken bones, but instead whether or not he has broken his massive camera / lens combo. Dave has been appointed our official C2C photographer. The rest of us, idiots that we are, brought along ultra-compact cameras, figuring that weight minimization is a worthy goal while hiking. Not Dave. Dave is, in many ways, different. Luckily his camera is unscathed, and remains so for the hike despite multiple other alleged falls and near falls. We walk further. The rain stops. The clouds retreat up the mountain-sides and we catch glimpses of the peaks along the ridge we intend to walk. Russell is suspicious: he doesn’t trust English weather. He argues for staying on path B in the valley which climbs up later and avoids several peaks. Sally, I can tell, wants to climb. Sally always wants to climb. Dave is doing pirouettes on slippery rocks. The decision is up to me. OK, I tell Russ, we’ll take path B. Russ is confused. He expected a fight. What, he says, just like that? What if, he says, I say I want to go up? I don’t answer, but I remember the comment… it will come in useful later when I lead him up the mountain and he realizes… too late!... that I lied and we are on path A. You see, he doesn’t know where we are supposed to climb up to the ridge J. Sally is quiet. I have told her my plan. We get to the place where path A climbs up to the ridge. But Russell has remained suspicious: he knows that there is something fishy here. He intuits the truth and accuses me… me!... of having misled him. I am forced to confess. But it is 2-1 (Dave is doing some Davething or other) and so we climb. Russell’s morale takes its first hit. We quickly lose the path… a second hit. It is, however, clear where we need to go and the slope although fairly steep is not dangerous (the other side of the ridge has the vertical cliffs). But now an unforeseen problem arises… Dave is falling behind. This is shocking to us all because Dave is one of the most in-shape people we know. Dave weighs around half of what an Orlando boy weighs and has single-digit (negative or positive we are not sure) body-fat: Dave can do anything. What is going on? It is simple. For the first time in many years, Dave is close to bonking: Dave didn’t train for mountain hiking. Later he explains to me why, despite my many and varied warnings and entreaties to him and the others, he chose not to train. Dave thought that since my 68 year-old father was coming along on the C2C, surely I wouldn’t plan anything too strenuous… and besides, even though he knew my Dad was training for the hike, Dave figured he could do anything that my Dad could. Three major mistakes:
And so Dave comes close to bonking. We wait at the top and when he has arrived and explained what was going on I tell him that he is fortunate we aren’t in the Alps. Here we have just climbed 650m (2200 feet). In the Alps one day we climbed 1700m (5,600 feet)… straight. Dave is quiet. I think the shock that we could climb that far, coming on top of the near bonk, has almost done him in. The best cure for a near bonk is food. We wolf our lunches gazing through the passing clouds down into the valley… and then the weather pounces. The clouds close in around us, visibility drops to 10m (30 feet), the wind picks up, and it starts to rain again. Russell was right, not that vindication gives him much pleasure. Nobody really wants to go back down into the valley only to have to climb out of it again later, so when I argue that even though we have lost our path half-way up the climb to the ridge, I really do know where we are, and where we have to go, and with map and compass I will get us there, he only puts up a token resistance. But I can see that he has lost faith. He is the first, but not the last, to do so. I set off blindly but (at least outwardly, I think) confidently… and find the path! And follow it without serious error until the weather clears up several peaks and hours later. Of course later, when the visibility is fine, I do get us lost, but that’s another story J. However, due to that unelucidated error we are 40 minutes later than we would have been getting to our rendezvous (the Honister Mines tea-room)… and they are closed. Dad and Miles are not there. Not to worry, we say to one another: they probably just went on down to the Yew Tree restaurant where the plan is to have dinner (and afterwards to go to two separate B&B’s because we were unable to reserve enough rooms in a single place for that night). We arrive at the restaurant, very tired after almost nine hours of hiking. No Miles and Dad. General consternation. But wait, perhaps they have had time enough to continue on to their B&B to change and shower before coming back for dinner? I call their B&B to check. The landlady says Oliver has been there, and is on his way to the restaurant, but no sign of Dad and Miles. Consternation grows. We sit there and discuss and realize that although they had a map and were supposed to have brought compasses, we don’t actually know if they have a compass with them. And without a compass given the bad weather at times and the lack of signposts and the confusing trails and broken terrain… well, they could be anywhere. Most directions they could have wandered off in would bring them back to civilization eventually… but in some of them it would take a long time. And by now the weather has closed in again! What if they are out in the mountains cold and wet and lost? Maybe injured?? Have I already killed my father and brother on the second day of the C2C??? Consternation approaches critical levels. We discuss search and rescue timing and options. Opinion seems to be coalescing about 9PM (after dinner, I mean, let’s be sensible) when the waitress comes to our table: the B&B has just called, Miles and Dad have just left and are on their way to us. Cheers!! The drinks that have stood undrunk before us until now suddenly disappear. The group is once more complete. Afterwards, we learn that, although they had a compass (and didn’t get lost where I did :-), neither of the two bozos had the planning document with them… and neither could remember the name of the restaurant for dinner, nor where their B&B was. So after the Honister Mines tea-rooms closed (15 minutes before we got there… my navigational error proved costly) they hiked right past the restaurant, first to the wrong B&B, then back to the right one, then back to the restaurant. Their day, which should have been shorter than ours, thereby became equally long. But since they were kind enough not to die in the mountains, we forgave them. Mostly. One last oddity: Dave was very silent at dinner. Dad and Miles noticed and asked why. We told them that it was because he had almost bonked. Never again on the C2C was Dave that quiet. Sally and Russ and Miles had blisters. Russ had some chafing. Oliver was somewhat better but still sick. Dave was quiet. We were all exhausted. The mood was elated! It had been a great day. Summary:
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C2C: The Coast to Coast Hike