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Time: 7.5h. Up: 995m. Down 880m.
Distance: 24km. Difficulty: medium Day 5: Patterdale (150m) to Shap (265m) A long day ahead, we are up and out early after the latest titanic full English breakfast. One understands why the ship went down if all the passengers ate like this…. Today is another up and over, followed by a long more-or-less flat hike and promises to be tiring. We set off, with my backside playing its usual role of parental control. It is clear and reasonably cool… excellent hiking weather! The views are superb. It is our last day in the Lake District and we have slept well, breakfasted well, and we feel great. Hubris of course, but we don’t know it yet. After a fairly long climb we come to the top of Kidsty Pike… the high-point of the day… and stop for lunch. Much merriment. And then the descent down to the lake of Haweswater… steep and tiring but manageable… except for Oliver who hurts his knee. Now, you need to know that Ollie has been in physiotherapy for bad knees for the past nine months. He damaged them kick-boxing… and then shortly afterwards climbed Kilimanjaro. And although he has poles with him, which make descents much easier on the joints, he has been using them sparingly, if at all, in order, he says, to toughen up his knees. And of course he didn’t have them with him today. Oliver clearly is not what you would call a “sensible young man”. So Russell says, executive decision, from now on you use poles, and gives him his. Ollie doesn’t want to take them. As in, he really doesn’t want to take them. He almost gets annoyed, but not quite since Ollie is a very polite fellow. Not sensible, but very polite. So they compromise on one pole, and even then for a while he walks along carrying it instead of using it. And here I have to explain how he walks along. Think Frankenstein. Think Lurch from the Addams Family. Oliver is tall, wearing black as usual, and is swinging along his left leg as if it were artificial and did not bend (which, except for not being artificial, it is). Every so often it jars against something and he lets out a stifled groan. He looks and sounds like a monster. Or rather, a very good looking, very polite fellow playing at being a monster. He looks hilarious. Or really painful. Depends on how much empathy you have. And, for most of the rest of the trip, that’s Oliver. I haven’t the foggiest idea how he managed to do the C2C on that leg… nor why he would want to. I wouldn’t have. Oliver is a remarkable chap. We are chased away from our resting place at the end of Haweswater by biting flies… one of the few times on the trip we are inconvenienced by them… and begin our walk along the shore. Promptly the path climbs 50m (165 feet) to avoid a lake-edge crag. Complaints are heard. Some members of the group seem to have been under the impression that once out of the Lake District they would have no more climbs or descents to do. Morale is low. Miles starts to lag behind even Oliver… he is dog-tired, and perhaps, although we won’t find this out until a couple of days later, already starting to come down with the same virus Oliver has had. And the lake goes on and on. It bends to the east and we can’t see its end for what seems like, and actually is, hours. At last we reach the end… and we still have a couple of hours to hike. The countryside is bucolic, green, peaceful, beautiful… but we couldn’t care less. Morale sinks lower. All we want to do is get to the Greyhound Hotel in Shap where we will stay the night. Finally we reach the long straggling village, and start to walk southwards along its main road. Helpfully, I point out all the places I could have booked for us to stay in as we pass them one by one. Morale sinks even further. Questions start to surface, such as, where is the Greyhound Hotel? I say, I’m not sure. And, do I know that it is at the south end of the village (because we entered the village some way along from the northern end)? I say, I’ve never been here before. Which is technically true, but also doesn’t answer the question. In fact, I know that the Greyhound Hotel is at the south end of the village, but the questions imply a growing lack of faith in my leadership and I’m in a Captain Bligh sort of mood and disinclined to pander to doubters. Morale hits rock bottom. And after a mile, it happens: Dad loses faith. He suddenly stops at a street corner and says that he isn’t going any further until he knows that he is going in the right direction and that he’s just going to stay here until we either wave to signal we’ve found the place or come back. He’s the second to lose faith (after Russell on Day 2)… but he won’t be the last. We (Sally, Russ and I – Ollie, Miles and Dave are further back) do what Captain Bligh would have done: we leave him there. And walk on. And wave back after another hundred yards when we reach the hotel. Oh, the C2C at times brings out the worst in a man. Which man, you ask? Why, my faithless father of course! The Greyhound Hotel turns out to be a great place… a 16th Century coaching inn that is being restored to former glory by its rotund and bustling proprietor who reminded Sally and me immediately of Barliman Butterbur, as in fact the hotel did us of the Prancing Pony (Lord of the Rings references for the rest of you). The food was excellent, the rooms very decent, and an early bed was found by all. It had been a long day, and a tough day, but there was a background emotional hum of accomplishment around the table that night. Summary:
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C2C: The Coast to Coast Hike