Day 121: Catbells climb

Full day in the Lake District, time to get in some serious hiking! There's lots of great peaks around this area, and we were keen to explore. After a (very large) English breakfast we headed out and started on possibly the best of them all - Catbells Peak.

It's not super tall, only 451m above a couple of nearby lakes, but it's still a good couple of hours climbing. Quite a few people out on the walking track, including a group of schoolkids with their teachers. Lots of cooing over Schnitzel ensued, though we soon left them behind. Kept climbing up and up, sometimes over slight scrambling sections, other times on well-formed tracks, before eventually reaching the peak.

Great views over the area, though it was quite overcast so photos don't really do it justice. This peak looks over Derwent Waters near Keswick, and looks onto several other taller peaks nearby. I find it quite deceptive though, as the sides of the fells are covered with greenery. In Australia, the greenery would be large gum trees, but here it's just small heather and bracken bushes, so my sense of scale gets completely warped and things are much less tall than I perceive. Strange.

Called mum from the top as well since I had good reception and Shandos was spending a bit of time taking photos. Back down via a different route so we had different views, but it was still much the same landscape. Shandos opted for a side-route down to the lake shore, but it was 10 minutes each way up and down a steep slope so I sat at the top with Schnitzel - no thanks! Already done enough climbing for today!

On our way back to the car we came across a large coach wedged on a hairpin bend! He was completely stuck - the front was almost on the far wall, the rear adjacent to the closer wall, the centre scraping on the apex of the corner, and (due to the change in road height), the undercarriage at the front was wedged into the tarmac. Not sure how he was going to get out without a helicopter! I pulled out my phone to take a photo but the driver started yelling so I decided not to. Very stupid to come down these tiny roads in a huge 55 seater coach though - no idea what he was thinking!

Although the coach was blocking the way we'd come in, thankfully we could exit the area the other direction, which we did. Found a small cafe a few towns over where we had a light lunch, then we basically just drove aimlessly around the northern Lake District looking for vantage points to walk and take photos.

We stopped at one waterfall area with the intention of doing another short hike, but the parking was a flat rate of five pounds per day so we gave it the proverbial and left. Drove up and down several different lakes, and though we found some very pretty spots we never quite found anywhere to hike after this. So back to the apartment we went around 4pm!

Stayed in for a few hours relaxing and working on various things, before heading back out to the same pub as last night for dinner. Even busier and louder tonight since it was Friday night and lots of people seemed to be away for the weekend. But the food was still quite good. Back to the room, where we ended our last night in England!Read more