I’ve not really properly written about much that I’ve done in the last five days that I didn’t do with Deb and Pete, so there’s a lot to write about but I’m also forgetting the details, so don’t panic, this won’t go on for thousands of words. Probably.

My last day in Keswick I geared up to keep going on the Cumbria Way. The forecast had been for strong winds that would be really bad on the peaks but I figured I wouldn’t be on the peaks so I’d be ok. Turned out I was wrong.

Ready to face the elements! Almost.

I skipped the first four km out of town (I’d already walked them on a previous day and it was all uphill) and caught a taxi to the parking area behind Latrigg. I got going fairly quickly after the first kilometre – I always stop and rearrange my straps and anything else that isn’t sitting quite right – then rounded a corner to head up a long, exposed north-south valley. Well, the wind felt like it was going to pick me up and throw me over the edge. I looked along the path, which had a fairly steep drop on one side and mud and running water covering quite a bit of what was flat, and decided to turn back. I am still not sure if I did the right thing, although the winds were later described as ‘gale force’. It would’ve been a miserable day if I’d kept going and I wouldn’t have enjoyed one bit of it. However I saw people walking and on bikes going in the same direction or onto higher paths and I wonder if it would’ve all been so bad. Still, I was by myself with no one to sound an alarm if I did hurt myself so better to play it safe.

On the way back into Keswick, feeling quite defeated, I passed a field where I watched (and videoed – check my Instagram feed ‘zenandtheart‘) two tiny lambs chase a goose around and then the goose chase them back. It went on for a couple of minutes and was completely charming.

I realised, when I got back to Keswick, that I had the key card for my YHA room still in my pocket, so I took that back and decided to head for Windermere, on the basis that it was a reasonable point from which to reach other places.

I caught the wonderful 555 bus that loops around the lakes and is a quite an experience in itself (as was trying to quickly get down from the top floor with my gigantic pack on my back) and on the trip I realised that the Windermere YHA is actually in Troutbeck, which is a little earlier. The YHA is also a good kilometre’s walk uphill from the main road, a generally unpleasant walk along a narrow road with lots of oncoming cars and blackberry canes poking out into the road. There was only one highlight – the sight of this doorway and stairs, which led to a field but had obviously once been part of something much more grand and looked like a tiny snippet of a Game of Thrones set.

The YHA in Troutbeck is a strange building. It is entirely made of cement but has a slightly Art Deco/institutional feel. There’s lots of comfy couches and a decent cooking area and almost right up until the end I really enjoyed my time there.

The second to last night made me realise how extraordinarily fortunate I had been in my room mates to date. The first of that evening’s companions was an older lady who was that sort of person who thinks of themselves as ‘no nonsense’ and can’t be in a room without making noise and harrumphing and trying to make eye contact because they are certain you want to know what they are harrumphing at.

I had been lying on my bunk, casually reading, when she came in and immediately leapt up onto the wide windowsills and tried to open all the windows to their full extent “I get so hot you see! My head just boils! It’s a medical condition I have!” (Menopause, I assume) “And these places! You can never open the windows properly because of OH&S! It’s SO HOT,” I gazed bemusedly at this as the weather was about 14 degrees and I commented that, being Australian, I perhaps didn’t feel the ‘heat’ in the same way. Cue ten minutes of her opinions about Australia and Australians (mostly positive) and relating her trips to Australia etc etc. then she started asking me about the light fittings. “When you turn the lights off at night, are these lights green?”

You can imagine my confusion.

“It’s just that, at every hostel I go to, they have these green safety lights! It’s awful! It’s all this OH&S gone mad! The last one was SO BRIGHT! I just couldn’t sleep at all!” I suggested she wear a sleeping mask but of course that wouldn’t work because she moved around too much in her sleep and it would be TOO HOT. Christ. Anyhow, I escaped with my iPad to have dinner downstairs.

The dining area has the most magnificent view.

The other occupants of the room seemed relatively unassuming and appropriately friendly. However one came into the room quite late and turned on her bedside light for over an hour and came and went several times, letting the door slam behind her as she went. Every time the door slammed The Harrumpher loudly cursed to make it clear to the rest of us that Bad Manners were being noted. This was far more annoying and disruptive than the door noise and introduced, to my mind, a note of tension to the room. I put in my ear plugs and covered my eyes but then lady #3 started snoring. The snoring was epic. It was not entirely rhythmic. It was verging on criminal. I think, through my earplugs, I heard the sound of a book being thrown and I did not move, just lay there wishing myself to sleep. It must’ve eventually worked because I woke at 6, all plans of going on a long uphill hike round at least part of the Kentmere Horseshoe quite ruined.

The next afternoon I asked for a new bed or said I was happy to camp – anything to be out of that room once I realised my companions were here again. Fortunately a spare bed was available – in a room ENTIRELY TO MYSELF! So swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

It did make me long for the privacy and convenience of my tent again, so tomorrow I’m off to camp elsewhere and hopefully it’ll be somewhere quiet!

Everyone says travelling alone is good because you can do what you like, when you like, but it also means having no one to bounce ideas off, or get inspiration from and I was kind of missing company after the first ten days.

I ended up staying a few extra nights in Keswick due to friends from Australia happening to be there at the same time, hooray!

Look at these two larrikins!

Pete and Deb will be familiar faces to anyone who was in, or has been following, the Africa videos that Luke is (FINALLY) finishing and posting now from our trip five years ago. We met Deb and Pete on our Dragoman Tour and have seen them in Melbourne a few times since. They were top value on the trip then (I’m not just saying that because you are reading this, thanks very much Pete) and I had an excellent few days hanging out with them in Keswick.

We had dinner two nights in a row then on the last day we walked to Castlerigg stone circle then did a bit of orienteering around the countryside, looking desperately for scones but finding nothing. I don’t mean we were looking for scones like you’d look for mushrooms btw, I means we were looking for a cafe. We found one that was shut and one that, despite several signs promising cake had not a whit.

Pete looking like a little hiker-gnome having a nap in a field, much to the bemusement of two walkers in the next field.

Over the course of the time we enjoyed dinner at the following three establishments: The Royal Oak, The Dog and Gun, and Wainwrights. The first was the fanciest, the second had the most character and the third had the best steak and ale pie I’ve yet eaten.

It doesn’t look fancy but it tasted amazing!

What kind of onion do these rings come from??

Even though I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people in the last few weeks it was a real pleasure to talk to people I had shared experiences with and who knew people I knew.

Pete and Deb had come over to do some walking but also to attend the book launch of Steve, our tour guide on the African trip. They planned to surprise Steve so I hadn’t been able to post about seeing them therefore I took a bit of a break from blogging that had absolutely nothing to do with me feeling lazy or starting an excellent new book.

After working in Africa, a few years ago Steve went to lead tours in South America and was involved in a road accident in which people died. He was sent to prison, despite the fact that it had not been his fault – the other vehicle had swerved across the road during the night. He ended up with dreadful injuries and spent months in prison in Ecuador. When he eventually returned to the UK he wrote a book. His website is at http://www.steviewhitesworld.com if anyone is interested in reading more. He also posts stories about the crazy and funny things he has seen as a tour guide around the world.

More (not very) crazy and (almost) funny things that have happened on my travels in the next update!

Since I’m not allowed to talk about what happened yesterday (mystery! Also a mystery that doesn’t actually concern most of you but I’ll explain in a few days) and it’s raining for the second afternoon in a row, I thought I’d do a post about what I’ve been spending and what I’ve been eating etc.

Having chosen to live the snail lifestyle, not buying much has been a pretty easy. The only thing I buy is food or occasionally something tiny or necessary, like nail clippers or a pair of shorts (the buying of which chased the sun away, as I predicted), plus of course paying for accommodation.

I’ve been mostly buying one big meal a day and making one or two or having snacks. In my bag I try to keep food that doesn’t need refrigeration and can’t be squashed, which doesn’t leave a whole heap to choose from. Today I bought:

I’ve been eating a lot of apples and cherry tomatoes for fibre and to eat something raw. I keep a long-lasting cake or packet of biscuits, like the ginger brack pictured (a rich fruit cake according to my hasty research) to eat over a few days. A piece of hard cheese to mix into pasta lasts a week and porridge is easy and quick. My jetboil is rubbish for cooking anything milk-based or thick as the heat is so intense and it immediately burns. Even constant stirring makes no difference. Basically it’s for boiling water, so cooking pasta or pouring hot water into oats or couscous works well.

I have some little tins of tuna, a packet of 2 (or 3, depending on your nationality) minute noodles and half a packet of pasta shells in my room, altogether it would be enough food for three days if necessary.

Money!

So I worked out that I’ve spent $113 AUD a day on average so far. Staying at The Sun in Coniston blew my $100 budget a bit, but with a few more camping and hostel days I’ll be back on track.

Keswick YHA’s lovely common room.

Eating out costs about $12 for breakfast (eggs and toast) or lunch (soup and toast or a decent sandwich) but dinner out is more like $20-30 depending on what I have and how many drinks I have. I nearly always eat in a pub and the food has almost always been excellent. I don’t normally have more than a pint of cider and maybe a glass of wine too – I don’t want to be getting up five times during the night, whether it’s out of a tent or disturbing my room mates.

If I make my own food during the day it costs about $10 max for the whole day. It is nice to try the local places though. Today I had lunch in a cafe that someone had recommended to me on the basis that it was quirky.

There was lots of art on the walls, all the food was home made and the place looked like an artist’s lounge room.

I had the cream of zucchini soup and it was delicious. They also had a communal sewing project – anyone could pick up the needles and continue it.

Compared to travelling to the UK twenty years ago, things are much cheaper for Aussies now. Supermarket prices are much the same as at home, or cheaper.

I compared beginning teacher wages here and home to see how affordable groceries were, comparatively.

A graduate teacher in the UK earns the equivalent of $35-36K a year. In Australia a graduate teacher in Victoria starts at $63K. Quite a huge difference!

House prices in Manchester for a three bedroom property average around $300K, the average in London is a bit over $1 million. In Melbourne the average is around $900k but in country towns it’s more like $350K. Right now Aussies seem to have the better deal, making it a far more affordable time to travel here than when I first came in 1999.

Anyhoo, I did get out this morning and managed to get up Latrigg after a few wrong turns. Most notably one road was closed due to logging and strewn with downed trees that I started to clamber over and then thought better.

The view over Keswick, the Derwent and all the way to Bassenthwaite Lake was lovely, if a little grey under the incoming clouds.

I climbed a little way up towards Skiddaw but the wind had picked right up and it was another slippery gravel path.

I passed this lovely monument that honoured three local shepherds who died a long time ago. A sheep obligingly stood still long enough to stay in the background of the shot.

Once again the hordes only seemed to start up as I was coming down. I’ve not been in the area long but it seems that rain mainly happens in the afternoon and most walkers set off just in time to catch it. Maybe they like it?

They were mostly wearing t-shirts and shorts while I lumbered along in my long top and pants, fleece jacket, long hooded raincoat and headband to keep my ear warm, still freezing for lack of gloves. I caught my reflection in a shop window on the way back into town and my khaki raincoat and lumpy backpack made me look like a sack of potatoes. Still, I’ve no one here to impress and the scenery makes up for my lack of glamour.

Lovely!

I’m now on my second full day in Keswick. I spent two nights at what has to be one of the world’s most lovely campsites and tonight I’ve moved to the YHA. Partly because of rain and partly because I’m sick of my blow up mattress and want a break.

The lakeside setting is stunning and despite being fairly full it was super quiet at night. The toilet and laundry block was almost brand new and every staff member was full of cheer. Of course the bright sunshine might have been a factor.

On my first morning I woke at the ungodly hour of 4 and got up at 4:30, as light was starting to tint the sky, and walked the 5km to Catbells.

If you, like I, have a dozen Lake District-related accounts on your Instagram feed, you’ll be very familiar with Catbells. Originally thought to have been ‘Cat Biels’ which means ‘cat’s hunting ground’, Catbells is a relatively small and accessible hill with a great view.

Unfortunately the path was mostly formed of loose gravel and steep enough that I didn’t feel like I would enjoy myself if I kept going up. So I stopped about a third of the way and watched the sunrise. It was lovely.

Although I felt a bit defeated from giving up on such a small climb, I saw many pheasants on my way home. I love them! I watched several harass a number of female pheasants in a paddock before the hens flew up on a fence and the males paraded up and down in front of them, looking miffed. If I had my DSLR with me you would be assaulted with dozens of photos of them so I supposed you can all be glad I only have my iPhone.

It turned out to be about 11kms round trip and it was 7:30 when I got back and I still had to hang around Booths for half an hour to get some breakfast. It’s amazing how far and how fast I can go when I’m not carrying my pack.

Aside from that I didn’t do much with my day apart from have a nap in my tent. In the afternoon I watched a man with his dog on the beach (rocks) of the lake clicking a dog clicker over and over while his dog seemed to ignore him. That’s super annoying, I thought. I wonder if his dog is blind?

So I went over to talk to him and it turned out that yes, his dog was blind. A little fox terrier that was 13 years old. We ended up talking for ages and he told me a terrific story about finding his extended family in Germany when he was young, almost entirely through chance. We also talked about dogs and travel and how nice it would be to actually live around here.

The next day I saw him in town and we sat on a bench and chatted some more and he bought us ice creams while I looked after his dog.

A lovely and relaxing day! Apologies for doubling up on some photos with Instagram, I’m not sure how many people will see both or if it’s annoying but I’ll keep doing it until someone complains.