Back in Keswick!

Well, well I'm on the road again. Been a busy first six months of my 40th year so far with Argentina, Thailand, South Devon and South Wales already ticked off.

Still, with adventures half across the globe, I was still looking forward to going back to the Lake District... very much looking forward to it indeed. And so was Rich.

We had had a great time when going up for half a week of hiking two years back. I had spent another week based in Keswick on my own between then and now and decided that it's a great place from which to explore the Lakes from.

So now I'm here with Rich after a 5.5hr drive up from Bristol. Despite a 7:30am start we still got into a bit of bank holiday traffic. But as the weather improved the further up North we got (Normally it's the other way around.), the more our mood improved as well.

Drove  into the outskirts of Keswick in glorious sunshine having just passed Blencathra, me enthusiastically pointing out Sharp Edge to Rich, who was slightly indifferent as he was driving and, fair enough, he had to concentrate on the road. To me it was like seeing old friends again. Skiddaw, Great Mell Fell, Catbells... I was beaming and keen on introducing Rich to all of them.

Rolled onto Castlerigg Campsite just outside Keswick only to find it full. It had been a risk just turning up, but they didn't take bookings anyway. Told us to come back next morning, as they had a number of guests planning on leaving Sunday.

Phoned around a bit, tried the sister site down the road and got lucky at Dale Down campsite, a 5min drive down the road. Lovely campsite with great views all around and a strong wind going! Checked in for one night and battled with the tent, but got it fairly quickly pitched, because we knew what we were doing, ha.
Just threw the basics inside and helped our neighbours pitch theirs as they were struggling and obviously not very experienced.

Headed into town hopping into a bus halfway down, arriving in a bustling bank holiday Keswick around 3pm. Had some Italian ice cream, checked some pub food menus and settled into one pub's beer garden out back with a couple of pints finally able to chill and get into a holiday mood. 

View of Blencathra from the road to the campsite

Made plans for the next three days. That is: I made the plans based on a couple of weather forecasts and told Rich, what we were going to do, ha ha.

Had another quick mooch around, bought some steak mince for our chilli tomorrow night from a market stall and settled into The Pack Horse pub for early dinner around 5pm.
Turned out we timed it just right, as it got quite busy soon after.
Pub grub was half decent and we left pretty stuffed to get the bus back to the camp site.

Looks like this bug had something to say about the plan

Beer and food. Richie happy.