Driech But Relaxed Days in Borrowdale

The idea was to try Dawn’s idea of putting a lightweight tarp thingy (sorry to be so technical here) in front of her tent to stop it raining in when cooking or coming and going when the tent is being used with a full inner and not the normal half-inner which is used when camping solo. Me and Dawn and LTD were involved. JJ had been invited too but he was busy having a “see how long you can wait” competition with BT.

So we went to the Chapel Farm campsite in Borrowdale where the weather was warm for December but with a broken but very low cloud-base. My hope was for a walk along Knitting Haws – High Spy ridge, but a driech morning of low and fast-moving cloud indicated that the fine views offered by this ridge would not be very fine at all. So we had a little trundle up Castle Crag by way of consolation.

Castle Crag, for it’s size offers a small adventure, lots of nooks and crannies and a smashing view of Borrowdale. We poked around quite a lot, had lunch in a sun-trap in the quarry, well furnished with propped-up bits of slate when the sun briefly appeared. And almost crushed LTD under two huge boulders which slipped as we descended and stopped only inches from his recently vetenaried legs.

After this, we wandered along to Holm Crag – a small knobbly top just by Grange campsite. Holm Crag doesn’t have much of a view as it’s heavily wooded, but for entertainment, it sports a number of moss-covered slabby rocks which provide hours of fun, twisted ankles, broken limbs, interesting blasphemy and graceful uncontrolled but short slides.

We survived this and went to the pub.

It rained a bit. Then it rained on and off all night and got quite windy. The tarp experiment was successful. I must say that the best thing about camping in December is the opportunity it provides for outrageously long snoozes. Mine and LTD’s record on this trip was 16 hours. I’ve no idea what Dawn was doing during this time as I was mosty in dreamy snoozy snory land… It was mainly dark most of the time.

Relaxed….

The walk was about 6 miles…