Bouth's finest!
We packed, put down tents, had breakfast (though annoyingly I spilt half my cereal on the ground - I ate a couple of mini brioche rolls to make up for it), washed dishes and were soon heading back out of Coniston village.
We walked for a while through a wooded area along the lake, then climbed out of the wood and into the hills.
We groaned a bit when we saw the hilliness of the next leg of our journey, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable. We saw rabbits and sheep and it was quite nice being up in the hills and able to pretend for a bit that the rest of the world wasn't there; that we were in our own little world.
We then climbed up further, and it started to drizzle, and "We Don't Need Another Hero," by Tina Turner, came into my head for some reason and spurred me on to keep climbing though it was getting tiring and we were getting wet.
We had a stretch of mountain where we kept meeting the same group of bikers, which was quite amusing: they would pass us, then they would stop and rest and we would pass them, then we would stop and rest and they would pass us.
At the top of this climb was a tarn, and it was nice to sit by it for a bit and relax and have a chat, and get to know each other a bit better.
We then set off again; after a bit of debate over which way we were meant to go we ended up following an old path down the hill, and gradually found ourselves leaving the wilderness of the mountains for farmland - but we still didn't see many people, maybe because it was still raining on and off.
We finally reached a little town and a lady offered to fill up our water bottles, which was nice of her. We were not sure of the right direction to go in to leave the village, so we did a bit of exploring which was cut short by the heavens opening and rain pouring down in absolute buckets.
We all huddled together trying to eat our lunches without them - and us - getting soaked. In the end Joan and Wayne thankfully found us and put up a little shelter for us to eat under, and then the rain seemed to ease off a bit and, having found the right path, we continued on our journey.
We ended up in a wood, where there was some extremely tiring climbing, but it was a really nice place to be. I like the Lake District because there are such contrasting landscapes so close to one another. We had gone from the lake to the mountains to farmland to woodland. The huge variety makes the days seem a lot longer and fuller.
We had entered the wood after a lot of rain and came out of the wood into bright sunlight; Lake District weather! We were in a nice little meadow and could hear the traffic on the road below. We then had a huge debate over whether we were in the right place and which way to go, and we eventually chose a route.
We walked through fields, climbed over the dodgiest stile I have ever encountered, asked a farmer if we were on the right path, and ended up walking through countryside until we reached a little village where we knew we were in the right place but had to climb a steep hill to reach the village church.
Someone handed out winegum-type things which were well-received, and we rested for a bit outside the church. Wayne quizzed us on the purpose of a block of stone that we eventually decided was probably a mounting block for visitors to the church to get on and off their horses.
We had one last leg to go after the church, which took us through another wooded area to the village of Bouth, where Christine McVie was born!
I wish I had her voice!
Our journey was complete, and as we sat in the pub car park taking our walking boots off and sorting out our kit, I realised that I was really lucky to have such an amazing group of people to be doing my Gold Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition with. And I felt a lot more confident about our assessment weekend than I had done on Friday morning.
Bring on the assessment weekend! I felt like I could face the world that day.
A special thank you to Joan who gave me a lot of really good tips and advice about packing rucksacks, and who was very kind and patient with me over the weekend.
I hope you, my reader, have enjoyed reading about my D of E journey so far; remember to watch this space to hear how things went on our assessed expedition.
Thank you for reading my blog,
Liz x
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