Wasdale Water World

We spent New Year in Wasdale, with torrential rain and a dog that hates the rain. Albert refused to leave Mrs Um for 4 days. We arrived on Thursday after stopping off in Chorley on the way, to visit my Gran. As she does every year she happily presented us with a big bag of local cheese, oat cakes (cheese flavoured no less) and chocolates for xmas. She's 90 this year and we don't like to tell her that I really don't like cheese and Dave is allergic to the stuff. She spent ages chopping up celery to go with the cheesefest...

Only in Chorley

It poured down on Friday, we attempted to get Albert out of Mrs Um planning on a trip up Scafell Pike; he was having none of it. So we spent the afternoon mooching about, watching the storm, listening to tunes. In honour of mates Kate and Jane we had a cheese quiz - Q: Which cheese do you like Dave? A: None, Q: What's your favourite cheese Gaynor? A: None. Quite a short quiz. We then decided to whittle the celery into a chess set, yes we were getting bored.

Around 6pm we saw a truck with a trailer with blue flashing lights going up the lane towards the little car park below Scafell. Oh dear, that looks like Mountain Rescue. Saw them leave around 11pm.

New Years Eve, still raining, Albert still refusing to move, we headed up Scafell Pike in the morning, passing an ambulance parked in the little car park. It wasn't cold but god it was wet with snow patches on the higher ground, me moaning, Dave shouting go on screw your face up a bit more.

There was about 30m visibilty with me calling Dave back a couple of times as I was losing sight of him.

We reached the summit and headed off to have a look at Broad Stand passing a group of 4 stern looking blokes walking with full kit (Mountain Rescue?). Broad Stand was as horrible looking as I'd imagined. I was starting to breath really heavily and have blurry eyesight, feeling really cold if we stopped so we headed down as fast as possible dropping down the scree to the right of Broad Stand (which takes you round to Lords Rake I think). Down we went, my first go at scree running - what a laugh, loved it! Bombed down the hill, with Dave shouting heh you, wait, you've woken up!

Back to Mrs Um, the ambulance had gone, Albert was curled up fast asleep. Changed out of soaking wet stuff, shook for a while, started on my foot of jaffa cakes (5 packets in 1, result!) then cracked open the port. Spent the rest of the day/night in the Wasdale Head Inn then saw in the New Year watching a massive thunder and lightning storm over the valley, perfect.

Merlot, Port, Dog Beer - Dave, Me, Albert

Drove home with a horrendous hangover trying not to be sick on the M6 fuelled by Burger King, not the best start to 2012!

Got home and saw the news that a 19 year old lad had died on Scafell Pike on Friday after falling and getting lost from his friend. He was found on Saturday morning when we were up there. He was staying at the same campsite. Terrible.

Daily Mail Article