“I think it’s time we had an adventure” said Ian, “Oh that sounds like a jolly jape” chorused the Adonis twins, Andy and Keith.
“Listen chaps I’ve got a wizard idea”, said Ian who was always coming up with super ideas for adventures for The Infamous Four. “Instead of our usual bimble round Mabie Forest on Saturday, why don’t we fire up the old jalopy and head down to the Lake District?, I’ve heard its jolly nice down in England-shire and we can pack some jam sandwiches for a picnic, with lashings of ginger beer to wash it all down”.
After a gang meeting at the secret HQ (although some people insist on calling it the David Keswick Sports Centre), everyone agreed it would be a capital wheeze to run up and down some hills in the Lake District. There was always a chance we might stumble across some treasure, pirates or a ruthless criminal gang, whose fiendish and dastardly plan we could foil.
Since matron always insists we’re
back in the dorms for midday Saturday we’d have to sneak out jolly early to
make sure we were back in time for detention (weekly food shopping).
We agreed to meet behind the bike
sheds early on Saturday so we could get down to Pooley Bridge on Ullswater for
early o’clock and Ian demonstrated his commendable driving skills by not
killing us en route.
The weather forecast from those
clever chaps at the Met Office, proved sadly correct as once again an
unrelenting drizzle saw us setting off from The Square in Pooley Bridge. Our
battle plan was to follow the High Street, which our Latin master had told us
was an old Roman road. Very ingenious bods, the Romans apparently they built
proper straight roads all over England-shire whilst the locals were still
running around painted blue, living in mud huts and chanting “Engerlund…Engerlund”.
Anyway High Street must have been built by the Roman equivalent of the Cowboy
builders because all evidence of straight, level and well prepared had
disappeared under muddy, bendy and hilly.
With commendable enthusiasm and
commensurate lack of geographical ability Keith and Andy sped up the hill into
the mist and promptly proceeded to trot right past the turn off onto High
Street, only after hitting a proper road and the “track” disappearing did Ian
point out the error of our ways. Fortunately Keith had brought one of those
new-fangled GPS magic box of tricks thingys and after back tracking and cross
countrying for a mile or two we were back on what purported to be High Street.
While the weather had been grim
to start, it got even worse as we gained height, cloud reduced visibility to
around 50 yards, the wind picked up and the rain was verging on snow. The
ground conditions were wetter than a wet thing on a wet day, sheep trails which
would have been challenging enough when dry, became trenches filled with near
freezing water and boggy sections meant regular immersions above ankle level.
All in all very character building weather.
Caroline is a jolly pluck
gal, in fact she’s spent so much time running with us that she’s nearly an
honorary boy now. She is what we regrettably; have to call visually challenged
and the combination of wind and driving rain and spectacles meant she was
running even more blind than usual. Ian still recovering from a long term foot
injury was finding it tough going and the Adonis twins usual sparkling running
conversation was reduced to occasional grunts, mutters and colourful
Anglo-Saxon outbursts.It’s fair to say that despite considerable reserves of fitness, guts and spunk, none of us were enjoying ourselves there was not a pirate or ruthless criminal in sight and not a whiff of Ginger Beer either. With the magic box (GPS) telling us we were close to the summit of Loadpot Hill it didn’t take much to persuade us it was time to turn round, the seven and a half miles had felt like a marathon, we were all bordering on hypothermia, with no feeling in fingers and toes, definitely not a picnic in the Lake District!
Our return journey was much swifter than the outbound one, with a grim determination to get off the hill, get out of our wet togs and get some hot scoff down us. Andy managed to run most of the 5 miles with his hands firmly clamped under his armpits to regain feeling, how he didn’t face plant is a mystery worthy of Conan Doyle.
Back to Pooley Bridge, with minimal conversation, legs hurting in new places, no relief from the rain, but blessedly descending below the cloud line and a marginal improvement in temperature.
We managed to bag a quick team photo before heading into the public lav for a quick change. When I say a quick change, what I mean is three frozen, borderline hypothermic blokes with no feeling in their fingers or toes trying to get naked then dry and dressed in an unlit and unheated Spartan lavvie. With typical but Scout preparedness Keith was quickly buff and passed the only towel onto Ian then Andy. Much hilarity ensued when in the process of removing his sodden under-top Andy “flicked” Ian on the buttocks, what a jolly jape!, Oh how we laughed.
With dry clothes on, the process
of getting warm began in earnest; a quick trip to the Outdoor Outfitters
secured Andy a fetching new hat, then along to Granny Dowbekins tearoom for
sustenance. They say every picture serves a story, well at least two of them
do…..that was a hard days running.
Full English breakfasts all round,
even Andy temporarily sidestepping his no carb diet by hoovering 4 slices of
toast.
Posting the route later on Face-page-book-thing on the interweb one of my running acquaintances summed it all up quite nicely
“You’ve not run in the Lake
District until you’ve had a near death experience”
CheersK
