The Famous Five and Grasmere.

Perhaps it’s my childhood diet of ‘The Famous Five’ that has led to our family romps around the countryside in search of adventure. Half term saw us exploring Grasmere in the Lake District with some friends.

We had an enormous picnic by Easdale Tarn. Ridiculous amounts of food and fresh air – we were just like the Famous Five, minus the lashings of ginger beer as the children don’t like it. The scenery was fabuous.

On the way back the children found a pool at the base of a waterfall and stripped down to their underwear for a swim.

I sat on a rock feeling nostalgic, not for my childhood I realised – I don’t remember ever stripping off and swimming at the base of a waterfall – but for the parallel childhood that I inhabited in my imagination, a childhood in which there were daring adventures to be had.

People hiking on the path above the waterfall paused to wave and smile at the children. It was one of those afternoons that you want to fix in memory so that it can be revisited and enjoyed again and again.

The Old Man of Coniston

A fabulous weekend for hiking saw us attempt The Old Man of Coniston in the Lake District.

I’m not sure if it was the weather or the steepness of the climb which made it our most difficult walk yet. There was some spectacular scenery as we walked past abandoned mines and spoil tips.

Just before the top of the mountain we found the tarn, Low Water.

We stopped and cooked sausages on a disposable BBQ while the children played in the water and Neil continued to the summit alone where he took the photograph below.

 During the hike I introduced the children to Kendal Mint Cake. We sucked the minty squares as we climbed the crumbly, slate-strewn paths and later as we skidded our way down again. It took us 4 hours to walk the four miles from top to bottom. When we got back to the car we were boiling hot and streaked with dust, but pretty pleased to have got as far as we did, despite not making the summit this time.

Troutbeck

Hiking this year has been marred by bad weather and a distinct lack of enthusiasm (probably related to said bad weather). Our recent trip to Troutbeck, near Windermere, involved an easy walk of a couple of miles, but the kids had to be cajoled and coaxed at every turn. Creating new story lines for Dr Who proved to be a popular diversion for a time, but the mood really improved when we came to some water. Pooh-sticks and paddling fended off episodes of the grumps and we made it to the end of the walk in a mostly cheerful state. Fingers crossed for sunshine and enthusiasm next time.

Whernside Peak

On Easter Sunday we decided to climb a mountain. The weather forecast was good, everyone was buoyed by early morning chocolate treats and we set out enthusiastically. As we approached Whernside Peak it started to rain. As we began our ascent it started to hail. By the time we were half way up the mountain it was snowing. We finally reached the top after a lot of muttering and grumbling and took shelter behind a stone wall as the snow turned to hail again.

The ascent was quite gruelling, so when we noticed an alternative route down that looked shorter, if considerably steeper, we decided to take it. We were joined by a couple of more experienced climbers, one of whom slid about a hundred feet down the mountain on his backside. The children laughed volubly and the climber turned to ensure them that he had actually done it on purpose (he probably had) which made them laugh even more. It wasn’t long though before everyone stopped laughing entirely in order to give their absolute concentration to getting down the sheer mountainside. Jo and Neil both fell, but not far. The rocks were slick with slime and liable to slide, resulting in several mini avalanches. We hadn’t realized that the route is an old one which is no longer maintained and comes with a danger warning due to erosion, bogginess and the extremely steep descent.

It took us more than two and a half hours to edge down the mountain. Once the steepest part of the climb was over we had to wade through a bog. I stopped worrying about trying to find dry patches when I was wet up to my calves. The day began to take on a hideous sort of hilarity and every so often the children would clutch each other and double over laughing which led to sliding into the bog and more laughter.
What kept me cheerful was looking over my shoulder to see where we had been. I kept saying look what we’ve done. That, for me, was the best part of the day; the hail, snow, rain, soaking feet and legs, zinging muscles etc were all worth the pleasure of looking over my shoulder and thinking I climbed down that. I took the picture above when we finally reached the bottom. I'm sure there are some life/hiking metaphors to be found in this story, but I'll leave them somewhere over my shoulder in the long grass and muddy water of the Whernside bog.
For better photographs of Whernside see here.

Malham Cove

Today we visited Malham Cove a 260 foot limestone cliff in the Yorkshire Dales. We climbed somewhere in the region of 400 natural steps to get to the top of the cliff face. Sam, Alice and I were much slower than the others, but then we tend to talk more too. One of the best things about hiking from my point of view is the opportunity it affords to actually speak to each other. There is no television and there are no Xboxes or DSis or PCs to interrupt and distract people; talking is the best and only form of entertainment. As we walked today I remembered some of the songs my dad used to sing with us in the car when I was little. There was the one about one man who went to mow a meadow. He took his dog, Spot and a bottle of pop with him and also gradually invited several other men to help with the job. There was another about a tiny house by a tiny stream where a lovely lass had a lovely dream, but I lost the tune somewhere much to everyone's amusement. The children had learned some songs on scout camps and school holidays which they in turn remembered and we walked along the limestone pavement at the top of the cliff singing a song about Tarzan being hit by a rubber band. I needed some sort of a distraction from the drop to the right of us and by trooping along like a platoon of soldiers the children avoided any panicked stay away from the edge shrieks from me.

It’s easy to imagine a huge waterfall cascading over the cliff, but the last time water was recorded flowing over the fall was in the early nineteenth century after a period of heavy rain. Nowadays the underlying cave systems have a large enough capacity to swallow any flood water before it reaches the fall. Divers have only explored about 1.6km of the cave network. There is a lovely story about a nineteenth century 'Spooky Parson' who claimed to have had 'visions' of the nature of the unexplored cave behind the Cove. He wrote down his predictions in a famous sealed letter, which was to be opened once the cave behind the Cove was discovered. The letter was actually opened by the Chairman of Malham Parish at a meeting in 1997, but most of the contents were undecipherable. Here is a site which describes some of the exploration which has taken place to date.
For me there is something magical about standing on structures that are thousands of years old and wondering who may have been there before. I tried to express this as we walked away from the waterfall at Gordale Scar, but everyone was busy chewing mentos and the words weren’t enough anyway, so the photographs will just have to speak for themselves.

Back to hiking

This weekend it was finally warm enough for us to begin hiking again. We started off gently and did what actually amounted to a short walk from Hightown to Blundellsands along the coastal path.

There weren’t any killer hills to climb or rivers to cross, no boggy fields to negotiate – I thought that the children would be pleased, but they were actually a bit grumpy: it’s been a long and sedentary winter for them, even Jo hasn’t done as much exercise as usual because so many of his football games have been cancelled due to frozen/snow-covered pitches.

Jo resorted to his customary coping mechanism for boredom and began to give everyone a football quiz.

Jo: ‘How many goals did Wayne Rooney score last season?’

Me: ‘I don’t know – do you actually know that, Jo?’

Jo: ‘No, but it was probably about a hundred.’

The quiz got boring pretty quickly, so we had to think of something else to do and we started making up jokes about footballers. The jokes weren’t really very funny, but as we walked past the sea with all the other Sunday walkers – families, teenagers, old people, dog-walkers – enjoying the pleasant breeze and chocolate chip cookies (they always help), the jokes seemed hilarious.

Occasionally, when you haven’t laughed for a while, it’s as if all the laughter has been stored up and is just waiting for the slightest opportunity to burst out – that was me on Sunday. Here are a couple of the jokes that were on offer:-

Which football player swoops around the field like a Jurassic animal?

John Terry-dactyl.

Which footballer plays for Manchester United in the nude?

Wayne Mooney.

Who is the grumpiest footballer in the premiership?

Peter Grouch.

Just as we were heading down onto Crosby beach to visit the iron men, a man thrust a piece of paper at us. It was a religious pamphlet, entitled ‘Take Warning.’ 'You may die this year,' it began. 'I wonder that you can sleep quietly in your bed.' Neil read it aloud: ‘What have you really got after all? Any hope? Any peace? Any joy? Any comfort? Nothing, literally nothing!’


As these words floated around the beach, the children all raced off to find an iron man to climb on and giggle at, and Neil and I were left standing on the treacly wet sand. The lyrics to I got life were humming around my head: I got my hair, I got my head, I got my brains, I got my eyes, I got my ears, I got my eyes, I got my nose, I got my mouth, I got my teeth....We followed the children across the beach and took photographs of them wrapped around an iron man. As we headed back up to the footpath I thought about what I’d got: a beautiful view of the Irish Sea, four rambunctious kids, a rucksack with treats in, wet trainers, Neil holding my hand, dinner with my Gran to look forward to and lots of clothes to wash when we got home – a fair slab of peace, comfort and joy, I think. And as we left the beach behind and headed home to the washing machine, there was one last joke:

Which footballer gets his muddy kit the cleanest?

Robin Van Persil.