Tuesday 27 May 2008

Rain

Today it rained for the first time in over two weeks. I am pleased about this. Now, normally I'm not a big fan of the rain and getting wet and I was happy that it stayed dry while I was on my holiday - however, water is kind of essential for a number of things. Like watering plants and putting out fires.

This is a view over Greenfield in Saddleworth yesterday with the smoke from the big moorland fire up at Littleborough (about 10 miles away) on the horizon, it was so windy that the fire spread really quickly and the smoke could be seen for miles. The fire burned through most of the night and only the rain we had early this morning put it out properly.

Monday 26 May 2008

Holiday in Keswick

Last week we went on holiday to Keswick in the Lake District. It seemed ages since we'd been out and done much of anything outside, mostly because it has been ages and we needed a serious kick start to get ourselves into gear and out on the hills. And there were hills. Steep ones. With sheep on, so it wasn't all bad.

These were some locals on the slopes of Skiddaw where were walked on Tuesday, up from Latrigg - where someone has conveniently placed a carpark a good way up - over to Lonscale Fell then up to Skiddaw summit via the Little Man.

This is looking back towards Keswick - very nice view and I may also have needed to stop for a breather. Shame it was only about 300 yards from the car park. Once over Skiddaw we turned right at Bakewell and headed back along the Cumbria Way, passed Skiddaw House.

Where there were some sheep enjoying the shade of the trees. This whole area is called Skiddaw Forest, although I assume that the forest part of the name comes from the really old meaning of the word as an area reserved for hunting rather than because of it having many trees, because it doesn't and the tiny wooded area by the house is, well, tiny. This was a pretty long day, considering we hadn't been out for a while and 12,4 miles in total, so we definitely deserved our chips that night. There might also have been beer.

On other days, we went for a boat trip around Derwent Water, visited the Cumberland Pencil Museum where they have the longest pencil in the world which is pretty blumming big and went to Whinlater Forest Park to see a proper forest with trees and everything. Including alpacas, which was quite a surprise.