LD 2012 (3)

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

Sunday was as dire as had been feared. Rain and low clouds gave poor visibility, with roads flooding leading us to hastily re-draw the walking plans. At some stage, Dave and I had to get our cars from where we'd left them in Patterdale on Thursday night over to Keswick, where we were staying on Sunday night. The weather gave us the opportunity to do this first thing on Sunday, so Dave and I hopped in a taxi for the half hour ride over the Kirkstone Pass, via the windy road known as The Struggle.

We got back to Grasmere an hour or so later and picked the others up and headed for Grange, where we dumped Dave's car, all jumped in mine, then drove up to Seatoller to start our short, low-level walk in the rain, with the intention of stopping off to take in a bit of the Borrowdale Show - if it was on.

The fields were quagmires and the river was rapidly filling to the point of overflowing but the Show must go on - and it did somehow. Five visitors from Aberdeenshire taking an unhealthy interest in sheep on display - who would have believed it? They even had an Ugly Sheep competition:

Farmer Sharp was taking a keen interest in the One Man and His Dog sheepdog trials, but the rest of us were fascinated by our first glimpse of a Cumbrian Wrestling competition, albeit with only 8 under-18 competitors, who had to line up to have their outfits judged before the competition:

The elderly female judge (standing behind the competitors) took an eternity to conduct a fairly intimate visual examination of the young entrants - it all seemed a bit weird. Eventually they got to the wrestling - somehow they managed to conjure up semi-finals and finals in 3 different age categories from this lot - although most of them were completely unfair matches, with the largest and heaviest almost always winning out. Surreal.

Soon we were on our way again, but we were passed by the impressively fast finishes of the runners in the Fell Race. You can just make out some of the stragglers coming down the hill here:

We managed one more team photo towards the end of our walk:

Back at Grange after a couple of hours, Dave and I jumped in his car and went back to Seatoller to pick up mine before all heading back to check in at our hotel in Keswick.

Conditions had dictated a rather truncated programme for the day, but here's the rather unimpressive stats anyway:

A few beers were followed by an Indian curry, then back to a couple of the local pubs for some end of trip drams: