Just got back from a camping up in the Lake District, and it was a really brilliant weekend.

Me and Jamie drove up on Friday night to Borrowdale, which isn’t too far from Keswick, and eventually found a camping field to set up on, so we put up the tent in the dark, and then had a quick drink before settling down for the night.

Woke up pretty early yesterday morning – and it was gorgeous outside… the sun was out and the sky totally clear. Now we could actually see our surroundings, you could see how stunning the place was. We’d camped pretty close to a river, which we’d kind of guessed because we’d heard running water, but we discovered that what we’d heard was actually a set of waterfalls coming down from the mountain that we were planning to go walking up.

So we set off, with our aim to make it to the top of Great Gable, which is pretty close to Scafell Pike which we climbed back in April. I found it a bit of a struggle doing the first bit of the ascent… it was boiling hot and the sun was pretty relentless on us! We were so hot that by the time we came to the first waterfall, I didn’t take too much persuading to stick my head into the flow of falling water!! We then walked up a bit further, and arrived at above another waterfall, and this time I decided to lie across a rock and tip my upper body backwards into the water, totally immersing my head into the cold water – much to the amusement of Jamie! Managed to pull myself out of there, but somehow had managed to also totally soak my shorts, as well as my t-shirt, so ended up walking a bit funny until I dried out a bit!

We eventually got to the top of Great Gable around lunchtime, and the views were amazing. We sat up there to eat our lunch and then started to head down a different way, and eventually came back to the river which we managed to cross by walking over some rocks, although I slipped and ended up soaking my boots and socks! We sat down there for quite a while, catching some rays, and hoping that my boots would dry out a bit!

That evening, after eating out at a nearby pub, we started driving back over Honister Pass, and pulled up at the edge of Buttermere lake, and ended up being convinced by Jamie to go for a swim! It was really smart, though I was a bit apprehensive because I hadn’t been swimming for about 10 years! And it wasn’t until I was in the water that I realised that there were millions of dead flies on the surface of the water so I had to keep my mouth shut when swimming or I’d end up with a mouthful of insects!

We waited until the sun set behind the mountains, and they dried off and drove back to the site. When we got back to the tent, Jamie ‘acquired’ some wood from the nearby fields, so we got a campfire going – which helped to keep the midges away which had already spent most of the day attacking us! It was really good spending a couple of hours chilling out around the fire, and just having a drink and chatting.

Woke up this morning, and it wasn’t as nice weather-wise as yesterday – it was still dry and bright, but quite windy. We packed up and then drove over to a place called Watendlath Tarn, and then went for quite a fair walk over to Dock Tarn above Rosthwaite, where we sat on a rock overlooking the lake, with the wind blowing a pretty intense gale!

We then walked back to the car (it seemed even further this time – especially ‘cos I was starting to feel a bit tired after all this walking!) and then drove down to a place that overlooked a massive lake and grabbed lunch before heading back to Manchester.

I forgot to take my camera with me, but I did take quite a few photos of the weekend on my phone, and they haven’t come out too bad, and you can view them all here.