Lake Distict Hiking Adventure

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This weekend we went with the hiking club on their weekend hiking trip to the Lake District. We left Friday night with the club. We had to tie all our bags to the roof of the minibus and then cram 17 people into the mini bus. I was all the way in the back next to Mark and Paul. Margeaux, Kyle, Ramsey and Josie sat in the row just in front of me. We were really excited and talked the entire drive. We started doing those riddles. Ramsey started with one and then Mark thought of one. The last one we did was the "Key game" which I led and no one got. "I can play the key game, the key game, the key game, I can play the key game, how about you?"

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We got to the hostel around 10:00pm or so. We had to unload the bags from the roof and it had started to sprinkle, a sign of what was to come. We sat around in the living room and talked and read magazines while they decided what the plans for Saturday were going to be. Finally they got the weather forecast and we had to decide if we still wanted to hike Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England ot drive a bit where it might be drier. I personally didn't care too much, but kinda wanted to hike the tallest mountain in England. Not that it's all that tall, it's 3,209 feet. Saturday morning we up at 6:45 am so that we could get an early start before the rain came in the afternoon. We had cereal, toast and tea for breakfast. We packed our lunch for the day and then headed out. I made a butter, ham and shredded cheese sandwich with an apple, 2 pieces of chocolate, chips and apple juice. The day started off pretty nice. I was pretty warm in all my gear. I was wearing legging, with workout pants and then my waterproof pants. Hiking socks and my waterproof boots. I just had a shirt and my waterproof jacket on. When we started going up the first hill I was actually too warm and took off my jacket for a while. As we started going higher and higher we could see the clouds coming closer and closer. The views were amazing at first, we passes a few springs/waterfalls and little ponds, lots of sheep and the hills were a mixture of reds, greens, yellows and browns. After a while it started getting really cold and very windy. The terrain started to be more rocky and more steep. There were a few places where we were practically scaling the  rocks to  get  to the other side of the trail. There was one point where we could only go down one by one and as we were waiting the clouds rolled in over us. Before that we could see the valley and the mountain and after that we could just see right around us. At one point the leaders had to make the decision whether to go the long and slowly ascending way or the short and brutally steep way. By now it was raining and I had all my clothes on and pulled tight in a vain attempt to keep dry. We stopped for about 5 minuted to eat lunch and during that brief break we found shelter from the wind on the side of a big rock. About 20 minutes after that we got to the top where the wind was so strong that it would blow you sideways. It didn't seem to me that anyone up there looked at all excited to be there. Everyone was huddling on one side of the shelter wall trying to escape the relentless wind and get a little warm. We didn't stay very long, there wasn't anything to see. They decided to go down a different way then we came up. Well that plan didn't work to well right away, we lost the trail and were lost for a little while. I felt like we were on a bouldering expedition rather then a hike becuase we kept having to make our way across all these really big rocks. Finally we found the trail and started going downhill. We didn't get back from the hike until around 6:30pm. It was about a 9 hour hike. It was a very long day. I didn't realize how wet I was until I started pulling off my layers. We had nice long showers and then waited for dinner to be cooked. We had chili on rice and chips. For dessert they made orange chocolate cake with chocolate custard. I went to bed as soon as I could. Sunday I opted to go into Keswick for the day instead of hiking. Even though I had put my clothes in the drying room they weren't dry yet and the idea of starting off wet was just not appealing. We walked around town and played with puzzles in the puzzle shop. For lunch the nine of us non hikers met up for lunch in a pub and ate together. After that I wanted to go walk along the lake. Ramsey went with me and we ended up renting a row boat for a 1/2 hour to go out on the lake. We split the cost and Ramsey rowed! What a deal! We ran into Margeaux and Kyle and walked with them. Along the path was this tree that you could climb under into the root system. Kyle and I climbed under because we didn't mind getting dirty. Then we took fun pictures pretending that his legs were mine so I looked really tall. There was this older lady watching us the whole time. We showed her the picture on the camera after and she thought we were really funny. The ride back to Bradford was pretty subdued. I fell asleep for most of it and everyone was pretty worn out. After we got back we met up at Omar's for the traditional after-hike Curry dinner. Again, I enjoyed it so much

Before that we could see the valley and the mountain and after that we could just see right around us.