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Four nights in Coniston

31st May to 4th June

Originally a three night booking, but extended to four because the weather was so good.  We’ve been to the CC site at Coniston a few times and it is one of our favourite sites, with excellent facilities and lots of nice pubs within walking distance.

Friday

We arrived early, which was just as well because the site was pretty full…school holidays!  We drove around a bit before selecting a pitch we have been on before and liked.

A rare outing for the awning this weekend, partly to hide the damage caused by the status aerial falling off on the way home from our last trip.…

 

We are having trouble finding anybody willing to undertake this repair, with one workshop saying the whole panel needs replacing, but they can’t get replacement panels because Avondale are no longer in business.  Some don’t even call back!  We are awaiting an estimate from somebody who says it can be filled.  It’s covered under our insurance policy but we need two estimates…problems, problems…

D has already started looking at new caravans, with a Bailey Ranger 470/4 topping the list.

Anyway, setup complete we strolled into Coniston and had a couple of drinks at a couple of pubs, then dinner in the caravan.  Oliver’s light ale and Oliver’s lager from the Coniston Brewing Company went down especially well this weekend.

No idea who Oliver is but he gets the thumbs up from us!

Saturday

We’ve been doing a lot of easy, low level walking lately, but not today.  Up early for a strenuous four summit walk…Grey Friar (770 metres), Great Carrs (780 metres), Swirl How (802 metres) and Wetherlam (762 metres) from the Wrynose pass…with lots of ups and downs.  About 7.5 miles in total.

J Looking down on the Wrynose and Hardknott Passes…

 

The summit of Grey Friar…

Monument and the remains of a Halifax Bomber which came down in 1944 near the summit of Great Carrs…

More about it here

 

 

More pics in the gallery.

Quite a tiring walk, especially descending from Swirl How and Wetherlam, but it was good to be back in the mountains.  Four more Wainwrights ticked off.  Well, three really, we’ve already done Wetherlam via a different route.

Back at site, our first barbecue of the year, quite succesful

Sunday

A quiet day lounging around the caravan in the morning, watching people leave.  Due to yesterday’s marathon, we weren't in a fit state to do much else!  What a difference a day makes, the site really emptied out.

Then a stroll into Coniston for Sunday lunch and a look around the shops. We came across the Coniston Institute Honest Shop were locals provide items to be sold. There is no shopkeeper - just a box for the money and a log book for what you bought.  Picked up some very tasty brownies and a homemade loaf.

In the evening we walked to the Church House Inn, Torver, about the same distance as Coniston but in the opposite direction, and stayed for their pub quiz.  We came third, and J got a complementary Baileys for getting the bonus question right.

Monday

A short walk at the southern end of the lake, nothing too strenuous.  Only a couple of miles, high point Beacon Fell, 255 metres.

We had the place to ourselves, and didn’t see anybody during this walk!  Quite a lot of cloud today, but it did brighten up later in the day.

Beacon tarn and Beacon fell…

In the evening we walked into Coniston again and had dinner sitting outside the Black Bull.

Tuesday

Left around 9.30, and nothing noticeable fell off the caravan on the way home this time

Gallery…

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Coming soon…

Three nights in Lower Wensleydale, a new site for us.

Not so lucky with the weather this time!

Skelwith Fold, 10th to 13th May 2013

Friday

Arrived earlyish to find the site less than half full.  This site is a bit car park like, with no grass between pitches, which (says D) makes it harder to reverse the caravan in…nothing to aim at.  That’s his excuse for the poor reversing, anyway!

A slightly sloping pitch in the Loughrigg section of the site.

Note the status aerial on top of the caravan…gone now, but more of that later!

As is customary when we come here, it was off to the Drunken Duck Inn for a beer or two.  Lots of beer this weekend, D sampled 8 in total, but not all of them were pints!

The Drunken Duck…a great place to sit on a rainy afternoon…one day we will come here and it wont be raining!

Got back to the caravan around 7 and stayed in for the rest of the night listening to the radio.

Saturday

The weather forecast for this weekend was spot on…rain in the morning but brightening up later in the day.  So we drove into Ambleside and had a look around the shops in the morning and bought a couple of things we really didn’t need and had tea and a cake.

In the afternoon we drove to Low Tilberthwaite and walked to Little Langdale, to Cathedral cave.  A massive cave, and as we walked in a group of girls were singing, like a choir in a cathedral…very nice.  Of course, they stopped as soon as they saw us!

 

We liked nearby Slaters bridge, too, and left Billy the squirrel travel bug in a geocache close by.

Had to rush back to the site to get changed as we had booked a table for Zeffirellis - a nice vegetarian restaurant in Ambleside – and the buses aren’t very frequent.  They have a jazz bar upstairs and that night’s act was Djangologie – A Django Rheinhardt style quartet.

A long (2 mile) walk back to the site afterwards because we couldn’t get a taxi!  Luckily it wasn’t raining. It was pitch black all the way and we didn’t even have a torch, so we had to make do with using our phones to light the way!

Sunday

The original plan for today was to drive up the Wrynose pass and bag a couple of Wainwrights, but the forecast was for heavy rain, so instead we strolled along the River Brathay to Elterwater, and then over the hills to Grasmere.  It did rain a bit, but that’s what waterproof coats are for.  Not a day for summits, though.

Got the bus back to Ambleside and then walked back to the site, which is when it really started to rain!

It brightened up later, so we walked down to Skelwith Bridge and had a drink in the Talbot bar after taking a few sunset pics.

Monday

Left around 10 and after an uneventful journey we arrived back at the storage site about midday.  Only to find that we had lost the status aerial on the way!  There was just a wire hanging down.  It must have been dangling for a while because there are lots of dents and marks in the side of the caravan, which is more annoying than the loss of the aerial, which never seemed to work anyway.  This caravan is looking very tatty now!

We didn’t go under any low bridges or overhanging tress, so we have no idea how it could have come off.  Just hope it didn’t do any damage to anybody else when it finally fell off!

So, off to a local caravan shop to get a blanking plate to cover the hole in the roof…grrrr.

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Coming soon…

Buxton CC site, which was cancelled earlier in the year due to bad weather.