Wellingtons and Waterproofs

A day in the Lakes

The road sign said "1,295 deaths in the last five years" (or thereabouts). Perhaps this might explain why I saw 4 police cars pulled up sneakily in hidden driveways, within a 5 mile stretch of the A595 between Thursby and Carlisle. I'd popped up towards Carlisle to visit a cemetery. Thankfully I didn't see any accidents along the way.

The Lake District is a very beautiful place, but it's not at it's best in inclement weather. Fortunately I know the place quite well. On an evening when it's wet, muddy and steeped in dense cloud it's like an old friend, I feel quite at home here.

Damp weather does make tent erection a little harder though, especially in the dark. I've hardly been out this Summer and it took five minutes longer than normal to pitch, poles in the wrong holes and feet tangled in the guys, Mr Magoo in charge of a tent. One advantage of night-time pitching is that your camping neighbours can only hear you grumbling and grunting. In the morning they'd have to puzzle out which of the new arrivals had been the incompetent oaf who tripped over their guy rope. Eventually, I threw in my camp gear, dried off and I was in a cozy, warm and dry heaven.

I just love camping out.

Asleep by 10 p.m. - this is a puzzle. I wasn't very tired after the drive and it really only took 15 minutes of struggling to get the tent up. When I'm playing the role of the little worker stuck in a concrete ghetto of little workers, I suffer from insomnia, sometimes getting less than two hours sleep in a night. In bed by 10? It would be less of a challenge to be strapped down and to have my little hairs slowly pulled out. So why am I out like a light at 10?

And what a great night's sleep! 9 hours uninterrupted snoozing until the pitter patter of rain on the outer tent shell woke me. Like an orchestra warming up, the gradual awareness of a cacophony of little sounds. The wind in the trees, birds singing, a sheep nibbling, the tom-tom-splat rattling of larger drops of water falling on the tent. I undid some zips - five in all, camping always seems to involve lots of zipping and unzipping - poked my head out and noticed that I hadn't quite cleared the farthest branches of a nearby tree when I pitched last night. The tree that was now dripping heavily into my eye. I was about to go back inside my tortoise shell pit when someone, fully kitted in waterproofs suddenly appeared, "Tent fees please". Almost forgot that I have to pay for all this freedom.

Got up and dressed, wellingtons and waterproofs, then did a tent check. I was far enough away from the tree to avoid any electric shock treatment in the event of a thunderstorm, but close enough to suffer a mild crushing effect if it decided to topple. I examined the tree. It was very old and resisted my attempts to push it over. I thought I probably had time for a pee, a wash, breakfast and a whole day's getting wet before there was any significant danger. More problematic were my training shoes, I'd forgotten to put them inside the tent outer last night. They were like sunken boats in the mud. I lifted one up and slowly poured the water out. I looked up, no sign of any good drying weather on the horizon ... no sign of the horizon.

Rainy camping breakfasts aren't really things you want to savour. I actually like soggy muesli, dried fruit and bran flakes for breakfast, but there's a definite time lag between the pouring on of the milk and the development of just the right degree of sogginess to make a really good soggy muesli breakfast. I was therefore quite a proud little squirrel because I'd remembered to do pre soak my nuts and seeds last night.

(By the way, you're not allowed to have naughty thoughts about this particular mushroom!!)

Visits to the hills often involve scrabbling around on steep rock, looking for for elusive footholds. It was clear that today, the rock would be wet and slippery so I decided to leave my scrambling boots behind and spend the day in wellies. This was a good decision because once I started out, it decided to rain properly!! I bravely looked up into the clouds covering Grassmoor's summit then wimpishly turned tail and headed down to the shelter of Crummock Water's wooded shores.

You'll be wondering by now, why all the pictures of mushrooms. Well it really wasn't a good day for mountain panoramas. While I was being dripped on by what may have been an oak, I noticed an umbrella mushroom growing out amid the moss on a tree trunk. There wasn't much light so a tripod was needed to keep the camera still during slow shutter speeds. If you've ever wondered what kind of very odd person stands around in the pouring rain for two hours trying to get the right light for a photograph of mushrooms ...

Further along the shore were some rocks in the lake, sheltered under a large roof of long tree branches. It seemed more like a dark cavern than a lake shore. Again low light here and again I needed a tripod. This time I only spent an hour and a half, but myself and my three-legged camera support were standing in just over a foot of water throughout that time. I was trying slow shutter speeds, experimenting with the moving waves over rocks and pebbles. Two lots of people stopped and puzzled silently over what I might be doing. I smiled and tried to look like a complete fruitcake.

The good news is that I got six shots. The bad news is that when I got back, I found they'd all turned out fuzzy.

After a few more strange looks here I thought it best to become a land dweller again. I headed round the lake and got a couple of shots of the water. The cloud had lifted a little but it wasn't possible to stand straight in the face of the wind. Every now and again, it would whistle down from the hills and whisk up a series of water spouts across the Lake. Quite hard to photograph without camera shake.

I decided to give the camera a break then. There's a place at the north-western end of Crummock water where you can sit on the lake shore (it's safer than standing), face the full brunt of the gale and gaze all the way past Red Pike and High Stile to Haystacks and beyond. A while back, I posted about one of my places. Well in quite a different way, this is another. A majestic but also strangely peaceful place, somewhere to expire and have my remains seep into the soil. If I had to become a tree, this is where I'd choose.

I spent quite a while here, conversing with the wind, waiting for my legs to turn into roots and for leaves to sprout from my fingertips. It was most annoying when this didn't happen. Clearly it wasn't my day to become a tree after all. Instead, I pulled myself up, headed out into the wind and slogged up gravelly paths into the cloud to get my late afternoon's worth of exercise.

It pretty much rained for the rest of the day and it was almost dark when I got back to the campsite. After a bite to eat, I put my head down and was dead to the world in an instant. Dreaming of mushrooms.

Note: the images here link to larger versions at Odd Photo, my new photoblog and from there you can get to even bigger ones at Flickr.