Day 10 - Seatoller to Grasmere

Distance Walked: 16.2km, Time Taken: 6h 26m, # Beers: 1 pint Ambleside Gold

We actually only spent 3h 43m walking today.  The rest of the time was spent admiring the views, taking photos, eating and just waiting for others to catch up.   Robin was working on her 2nd set of blisters today and her husband, Aaron, has a problem with his feet that makes walking more than 10km very painful.  Why they chose to do a holiday where the shortest day is longer than 10km and most days are around twice that is not clear to me.  They did gets lifts in the van at the start and the end saving them 4km and 2km respectively, but the hardest bits - the climb and descent - they just had to do.  Aaron has decided to skip walking altogether for tomorrow.

 

 

I was particularly anxious that we get to Grasmere at a reasonable time.  Firstly, because there is a famous gingerbread shop here, the Grasmere Gingerbread Shop, and I am very fond of gingerbread.  The second reason is that we've been having pleasant sunny weather all week and this is predicted to continue into the middle of next week.  I'd packed plenty of wet weather and cold weather gear but nothing for warm weather.  We've all been given polo shirts with the Badger Adventure logo on them.  I wore mine today but it is made of heavy cotton and I think I was hotter wearing it than if I'd worn one of the my long sleeved tops.  I wanted to get to Grasmere before the shops shut so I could by some short sleeved hiking shirts.

We got to Grasmere by 4:30pm so I stopped at the first outdoor gear shop I could find. However, they hadn't been expecting fine weather either and had sent all there summer gear back to the warehouse and only had cold weather gear in stock.  Fortunately, there was another outdoor gear shop in the village.  They had packed up there summer gear too but hadn't sent it back yet.  They kindly rummaged through the boxes and turned up two tops.  Sadly the colours are burnt orange and pale blush.  Neither colour is particularly flattering.  However, given that when I'm hiking in this weather, I'm red in the face and dripping with sweat it probably doesn't matter.

Again the scenery today was wonderful.  However, our enjoyment of the dales and the fells was hampered by the over-flights of pairs of F-something-somethings.  There is an airforce base nearby and the pilots like to practice flying over the passes, then dropping down into the dales (relatively) low before climbing sharply when they get to the other end.  They are clearly having fun, but they are so loud.  They made pass after pass after pass after pass.

I know I said I liked last night's hotel the best but I take it back.  Their breakfast was not very good.  The cooked food was all very Dull and the jugs of milk on our table had all curdled!  Fortunately, I drink my coffee black.  We'd ordered 8 packed lunches, each of which was supposed to come with a sandwich, piece of fruit, packet of potato chips, chocolate bar and bottle of water.  They put out 8 pieces of fruit and 8 chocolate bars but only 7 sandwiches and 3 bottles of water, although we did get 9 packets of chips.  As we were leaving we saw our waiter from last night walking down the road to the bus stop, wheeling his suitcase behind him.  The poor sod's first night was clearly also his last night at that job.

Our hotel here for this night, the Wordsworth Hotel, is definitely more upmarket that last night's.  Not only do I have a very comfortable room, my bathroom has an actual bathtub!  After showering off my sweat and grime, I soaked in a hot bath, eating my gingerbread.   For dinner, we ate in the hotel restaurant.  Tasty food was served promptly and correctly.  I had a lamb roulade on a bed of polenta for main and an blood orange & almond cake with chocolate orange ice cream for dessert.  You Could Eat both of them.  I have high hopes for our packed lunches from here.  The packed lunch today was Dull.  I had cheese and chutney, which was made with stale bread, which was tasteless.  I can understand tasteless cheese but serving tasteless chutney takes effort.