Coast to Coast 2006

      > Day 1
      > Day 2
      > Day 3
      > Day 4
      > Day 5
      > Day 6
      > Day 7
      > Day 8
      > Day 9
      > Day 10
      > Day 11
      > Day 12
      > Day 13
      > Day 14
      > Final Thoughts

Links on Walking Places

Day 3: Stonethwaite to Grasmere
Thursday 7th September 2006

Our first really sunny day.

Anticipating a shorter day, we planned a late start, with a good breakfast at 8:30. FULL breakfast, though James has started refusing the beans. For Americans, perhaps a description of a full English breakfast is in order. Cereal and juice, followed by a plate containing a fried egg, baked beans, mushrooms, hash browns, English Bacon, sausage, and broiled tomato. Toast, with butter and jam. Coffee or tea.

On the trail by 9:30, crossing the footbridge at Stonethwaite to join the path, and gradually up the valley alongside Greenup Gill, with great views back towards Borrowdale.

We were a little slow going up, particularly the steep last climb to  Lining Crag. We met an older English couple going the opposite way, who immediately detected that we were not local, and told us that if you meet someone coming down at 11am, it would always be a local out for the exercise. They had been up from Borrowdale and were headed back down. Told us they had not done this climb for 30 years. Good on them.

Over the top at about 2000 feet, and off across a hillside, aiming toward two old iron fence posts, and then on down a (mostly) gentle and scenic descent, on the low path along Easedale Beck into Grasmere, and the Glenthorne Guest House. We were in town early, and took advantage of the afternoon to stroll around town, which was bustling with tourists on a Thursday in September, yet still implausibly beautiful. James replaced a lost comb at the pharmacy, we bought cheese and fruit for the next
day’s lunch, and after debating over half a dozen menus we settled on dinner at Tweedie’s Bar at the Dale Lodge Hotel. We were joined as we finished by two Brits we talked with the night before in Stonethwaite.

The attentive reader will recall them mention of a questionable knee at the end of day one. I pulled a ligament on the right knee topping Dent Hill. Day two pushed it hard, but today, but with the aid of ibuprofen, an ace bandage, and a walking stick I broke off and whittled down when passing through a logging area on day two, the knee seemed on the mend.

Up is still easier than down, but walking on the level I can make up for lost ground.
 

< Previous          Next >