In which Marsh and I trudge around in the wet, and the clouds lower from the very sky; spirits are dampened, but are ultimately revived by a life-changing encounter with a chicken.
So Marsh and I spent last week in the Lake District. It rained every day. Even the day it didn't rain during our walk, it rained on us all the way home. Of course I'm used to this, being Scottish most of my holidays were spent in a cagoule, often with a rolled up carrier bag on my head (-don't try this at home kids). Despite the awful conditions Marsh and I went out wearing our cheeriest dispositions, buoyed by the promise of a pint and log fire at the end of it all.
We had a walk each day, mostly around where we were staying in Ambleside, as we'd not explored that area very much before. All the rain made the waters of the Scandale Beck flowing under the Sweden Bridges (two old pack-horse bridges) and Stock Ghyll Force most spectacular. Aira Force, where we took my Dad on the Monday, was even more impressive. Vast quantities of water spilling from a high, tiny gap, the sound, thunderous, greeted us before the sight of the falls. My Dad snapped away with his camera, all of us bathed in spray, when suddenly the clouds opened and the sun came out. The cluster of fully-grown adults gathered at the base of the falls cooed like children as rainbows appeared in the spray. The clouds returned, but the moment was almost like magic.
Not all the moments were magic though.
As a recovery aimed leg-stretcher following our ascent of Scafell Pike, Marsh and I took on the task of climbing Wansfell Pike, with afters in the village of Troutbeck. The path to the pike was essentially a rock staircase cut into the hillside, and after an hour of trudging, our empty thighs grumbling all the way, we reached what is one of the loveliest views in the lakes. Windermere and all its islands lay before us; Patterdale to the right of us. Well, that's what the guidebook said. We'd been in low cloud from about 100m in. We enjoyed fabulous views of cloud, mist, fog and an electric fence as visibility slipped to about 15m.
The next part of the walk crossed a bog: it had to be a bog, didn't it? drizzle, low cloud, miserable, it just
had to be a bog. Our guidebook told us to follow a line of cairns towards a walled track. There were no cairns on the OS map, and I have a terrible case of cairn blindness, so prudently Marsh took a compass reading and worked out a bearing for the track at the other side of the bog. Now Marsh as you all know is magnificent and right about everything, with the insignificant exception of rawlplugs; thus it was no trouble at all for her to lead us across a lumpy-bumpy bog, complete with streams and sheep in truly awful visibility and low spirits.
Even with Marsh's orienteering marvel couldn't raise our mood and we thumped into Troutbeck like petulant teenagers. However the sun came out, so we scoped out a random bench and decided to eat the contents of our rucksacks. A chicken lurked. A hen, in fact. She was mostly orange with some green feathers going on at the back, she appeared friendly and was very interested in the contents of our rucksacks: we had the feeling that she'd done this before.
Marsh and I had entertained the idea of having chickens, we decided that if we did we'd call them things like Mrs Featherington, the Lady Cluckington-Beake, Miss Peckworthy and my particular favourite: Dame Strut. Please don't judge us too harshly reader, we live in the country and have limited access to the internet: we make our own entertainment. In honour of this we dubbed her Mrs Featherington, and despite the fact that she ate a decent amount of our sandwiches and the pastry element of the sausage rolls, and that she pecked Marsh more than once, she cheered us up no end. Traipsing half a mile through foggy bog was worth it to make the acquaintance of this rather charming chicken.
