Fight Club Hikers Anniversary Bothy Night

Due to the fact that the Knipemobile is in the car hospital at the moment having a new in-tank petrol pump, Masey gave me a lift to the Lakes and by late morning we (me , Masey and his collie Pepper) were parked up at the foot of the Dale, apparently in the midst of a fox hunt, or, as a local farmer winked - “exercising the hounds…”. They do it on foot in Cumbria and, apart from the occasional hound noise from the fells and the large number of people standing around in fields, there wasn’t a lot to show that anything much was going on.

But they locals were friendly and enquired as to why Masey was carrying an enormous bag of kindling. The logs were stored in side the rucksacks, plus a fair amount of booze and food. One asked what time we were doing dinner…..

We arrived at the bothy in a rain shower, thoroughly soaked from both the rain and the soggy ground and proceeded to light the fire and warm up and dry out.  I put the old akto up outside as a defence against cold bothy floors and vicious snoring.

It went dark, at which point, paddy and Gill arrived, along with Woodstock and a convivial night was spent in front of the warm stove, which really is very efficient and warms the place nicely.

At some point in the proceedings, one of the bothy ghosts joined us, refused food, drink and tobacco, but helpfully spent the night feeding fuel into the fire. Apparently, it’s very cold where he is….

And so the night passed. I eventually retired for a cosy night in the akto and was only disturbed by my phone alarm which went off according to British summer time and not GMT – I must fix that…

The morning was bright and blue and clear and we had a pleasant, sunny walk back down the sloppy dale to the cars – about five miles each way.

We may come back in deeper winter conditions and with more fuel….