Distance Walked: 13.5km, Time Taken: 5h 2m, # Beers: 1 pint Wainwright Amber ale
Today we actually walked a little bit further than we needed to. We've split the standard 3rd day of the route into two pieces. The standard route plan would have had us ending in Patterdale yesterday, but we broke the day in two and only reached there this afternoon around 3pm. We then walked a kilometre or so north to Glenridding for tea and cake (Harmless).
We saw a good 20 or 30 people on the route out of Grasmere today. Grasmere is a popular base for people wanting to walk to some of the most famous Lake District peaks such as Helvellyn. Only about a dozen are walking the C2C. Still, it feels a little like walking in a city park rather than being out in the countryside. We saw even more people on the trails yesterday, but there was some sort of competition on with 250 entrants.
Walking today was easier than yesterday and Aaron had chosen to ride in the van. However, our speed was much the same as yesterday. Not an issue for today but it will be tomorrow when we have to walk to Shap. We are actually staying 2 nights in our hotel in Shap, having being driven here in the van. We will be driven back to Glenridding/Patterdale to walk back here. So far, so good. However, the distance we have to cover is 25km, which at our speed will take over 8 hours. They don't serve breakfast here until 8am and it is a 40 minute drive back to our starting point. We are also booked in for dinner at 6pm. The math just isn't mathing. The current plan is to leave here at 7am (!), drive back to Glenridding and have breakfast in a cafe. We will then do our last climb up over the eastern most fell in the Lake District and down into the valley in the Dales. From there our trusty Tim, the support van man, will pick us up and drive us to Shap. This will shorten the trip by about 6km. We'll have to add that into the walk for the day after tomorrow. Most of us are (currently) still determined to walk every step of the way.
I'm afraid I've broken the weather. The first 3 days we've had fine sunny days with barely any wind. It has been so warm I bought 2 short sleeved tops yesterday. I wore the less hideous one (in burnt orange) today. As a result, today was significantly cooler with almost total cloud cover and a strong breeze, particularly up high. Tomorrow I'll be back in my long sleeved warm tops. I might even break out the beanie and gloves. Hopefully not the waterproofs.
Our hotel here in Shap, the Greyhound Hotel, is a sad letdown after the 4 star luxury of our previous night's accomodation. Admittedly, I've got the largest room so far on this holiday. However, the heating doesn't work and there is an odd smell. Not quite drains but not exactly pleasant either.
For dinner, I had the sausages and mash, as did several others. The gravy was a little too salty and the mash needed more butter, but we agreed it was Harmless. I didn't bother with dessert as I'd had cake for afternoon tea.
We had fun at breakfast this morning. All the staff at the hotel were non-native English speakers and had quite a strong accent (Polish?). When the waiter came to take our breakfast orders Tim thought he was asking us if we were ready full breakfast, i.e. did we want the Full English breakfast. He actually was asking us if we were ready "for" breakfast, i.e. ready to make our order. Tim then tried to order a bacon and mushroom sandwich. The waiter said "right you want Full English with bacon and mushrooms". Tim then corrected him, which got the waiter saying he understood and Tim was ordering the Full English with bacon and mushrooms. They did several rounds of this before Tim realised the waiter was teasing him.
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