That Must Have Been Some Road

With no race to do we spend the day walking. We had contemplated going to the start anyway where one of the organisers was giving out minced pies and mulled wine to all those that turn up. As these will have been bought with the race in mind I imagine he has quite a lot to give away and perhaps we should be helping him dispose of them.

In the end though we decide to explore where we are rather than return to an area we know very well. So we set off on a walk and follow the track up towards ‘High Street’. Which at 828 metres is the highest point at this end of the Lake District. It is named after the Roman road which ran from Penrith to Ambleside and bizarrely went over the summit. That must have been some road. Apparently it was easier and safer that hacking through the woodland in the valley.



We don’t intend going all the way to the summit and turn back once the path starts getting too icy to navigate. We need a dinky pair of spikes like the ones we saw one walker with.



So we return to Troutbeck via the Kirkstone Pass which was built the way the Roman’s refused to go and stop off for a jar at the Queens Head, a luxury not available to those road building Romans.



Robinson’s Old Tom on draft, you don’t see that very often. Like never. 8.5% and deadly stuff.



L has two! Halves I hasten to add. Thankfully it’s only a short stagger from there back to base camp.

(Sunday 12th December)

Bunking Off

When the alarm goes off on a morning L often suggests we bunk off. She always comes up with some tempting and persuasive arguments but no, again today I’m not convinced. Tomorrow we can bunk off, I promise, or at least pretend to. We’re off anyway and heading up to the Lake District. L is doing the Great North Swim. I’m spectating and because all that Old Peculiar and Snecklifter needs company, I’ll also be propping the bar up.



Having not bunked off, I’m not sure what’s best to do today training wise, run or bike? On the grounds that I’ve only cycled to work twice during August I choose the bike. Only two trips on the bike in August is terrible. I suppose I did have a couple of week’s holiday in there but even so.

It’s a pleasant pedal.

After work I ride home, kick the dogs’ footballs around the garden for a bit and then get the bus back over to Derby. We have a works meal tonight. It’s Indian, so unturnable really and a good start to my four days off.

Just as I’m ordering my first Cobra of the evening a text arrives on my phone. ‘URGENT: Great North Swim Postponed. Check www.greatswim.org for info.’ Hmmm. Is L having a laugh?

Apparently not. Checking the Great North Swim website reveals that they have ‘postponed’ the event due to the ‘prevalence of blue-green algae and the impact that this may have on your safety in the water’.

Talk about last minute... particularly considering how long the organisers must have known about the problem, as it is not something that has just occurred. We heard a warning about the algae back in June and were told to keep our dogs well clear of the water when we last went up there. Yet despite those algae warnings the Windermere Tri went ahead as planned in July.

So now they have 9,000 disgruntled punters who will have spent months training, booked accommodation and taken time off work. Call me cynical but perhaps the tourist industry didn’t want people to have time to think about cancelling...

(Thursday 2nd September)

Feeling Lucky

The weather is miserable but dry, so far. I’m feeling lucky, so I decide to dodge the inevitable rain on the bike. It doesn’t rain.

L does the bike too, indoor. She executes my training plan on the bike with the broken seat. My training plan obviously isn’t tough enough if she has to spice it up like that. I must review it. She says she’s feeling quite pleased with herself. I’ll have to put a stop to that as well.

My luck is holding and it’s still not raining as I cycle home. Though I forget that they have the road up in Stapleford. They have scraped the surface off, ready for resurfacing. It’s not before time; this has been easily the worst section of road on my journey since I started cycling to work four years ago. It’s even worse now of course with the road up, a real puncture trap, so I should have taken a different route but I forgot. Still my luck holds. At least today they have started to lay tarmac on a stretch of it and it’s lovely. It will be great when it’s all done.

I get home and take the opportunity of a night free of training, neither dog nor running, and the lack of rain, to cut the front hedge. There I am whizzing along with the cutters when I inadvertently chainsaw through a wasps nest. Not so lucky now. Ouch. Well that doesn’t really describe it. I leg it round to the back garden pronto but not before I’ve taken at least half a dozen hits on the arm, neck and head.

Nursing my wounds, I watch from a safe distance as a reinforced wasp army of hundreds circle the front garden ready to launch a fresh attack should I dare to pick up the hedge cutters again. Later, as things calm down, I inch back into range and notice the nest... it’s the size of a football. How did I not see that!



It is around this point that I realise that the damage to myself is more severe that I first thought. I am now coming out in some all over allergic rash of hives, in a nice range of colours ranging from yellow to red. Within the hour my body was looking impressively like a relief map of the Lake District. L calls NHS Direct who recommend immediate admittance to A&E. I settle for some anti-histamine pills instead. Then after another hour or so the worst of the mountain range are starting to subside. So it seems I might live after all. Still, I suggest to L that she best get romantic with me tonight just in case it’s her last chance... she doesn’t actually say no but I can tell that being seduced by Mr Spotty isn’t top of her ‘to do’ list this evening.

(Monday 26th July)

Not Smiling Much Now

I’m only at work in the morning and in the afternoon we head up to the Lake District, after first collecting Daughter hot foot from her exam.

Unfortunately we aren’t going to get any snow up there, which is a pity and its forecast to be a warm 6 or 7 degrees all weekend. If anything they’re expecting rain. Our company snowman is so far surviving the warm spell but only just. He’s not smiling much now, well because he can’t, as his face has fallen off.



M6 was a doddle for once, which was probably just as well with no audio book to take my mind of it. I’ve just finished the last one that L got me, Owen Sheers’ ‘Resistance’. She got me it on the basis that it sounded wonderfully bleak. Its concerned the hypothetical situation that in 1944 the Germans repelled the D-Day landings and counter attacked with their own invasion. With the Americans, although in a war with Japan, refusing to get involved in a European war, Britain is effectively left to its fate. The German invasion is a success and they eventually take full occupation of Britain, with the country being governed by a collaborative government based in Harrogate. It’s an intriguing plot and it looked to me that L had made a good choice.

Unfortunately the book doesn’t elaborate much on what I’ve put above. It mentions the war situation only occasionally and when it does they are brief mentions. So it fails to slake my appetite for that side of the story. Instead the majority of the novel concerns life in a Welsh valley, in to which a small German patrol is despatched. In the valley they find just the women and their farm animals, their husbands having left the valley to become members of the Auxiliary Units, a resistance movement. The author tells us in the afterword that he heard from locals the story of these Auxiliary Units and how they were made ready for any potential invasion, which of course in reality thankfully never came. It sounds like fascinating stuff and makes it all the more mystifying why Sheers then let this and the entire occupation of Britain become such a minor part of this book.

Instead he focuses on the continuation of farming life in the valley as the German soldiers desert from their duty to spend the harsh winter there and assist on the farms, forging uneasy friendships with the locals. There is even a love story of sorts between the main characters from either side. The author shares with us his obvious love of the Welsh countryside and does so with plenty of rich language but it’s all very unsatisfying for an unromantic like me who’d rather hear about the war. Probably one of the most frustrating books I've ever read.



We’re in the pub early and our friends turn up a little later. Whilst being early for them, we had still managed to despatch three pints by then and now I’m ‘forced’ to have some more. They have a rather nice dark ale by the Loweswater Brewery’s called Grasmore Ale, a 4.3% mild, that wouldn’t really be able to be bettered had it not been that the celebrated Snecklifter was on as well and tasting particularly fantastic. This is despite the fact that with the Jennings Brewery still being a bit soggy after the floods in Cockermouth it is currently being brewed by their parent company Marstons.



We stagger back to the cottage for some chilli to soak up our excesses.