Day 2 Bogs and Bridges

Date: Monday 13 September 2010

Area: Lakeland

Distance: 13.8 Miles 22.2K

Start Location: Patterdale

OS Sheet: Explorer OL5 & OL4

Outline: Patterdale – Aira Force- Dockery – River Greta – Thelkeld – Keswick

Journey

Monday started dry but cool and overcast we got out the YHA about 09:20am, nipped into the Post Office for sandwiches and chocolate and walked up to the bus stop to catch the bus (to avoid a long and possibly dangerous road walk) to Aira Force. Already at the stop were  5 yanks from Oregon and we had a great twenty minutes or so chatting about visiting each other’s countries , the Coast to Coast, from which they were catching a bus to Penrith and on to Shap to avoid what they had been told was the hardest day. They were amazed that we were walking in approach shoes not boots, we tried to educate them.

Aira Force had a lot of water coming down it, and I came to realise that if you want to take photos of waterfalls it is probably better walk down hill not up, discuss. From Dockray, we’ve been here twice before but never when the pubs open, mustn’t let that happen again, we walked up the road west out the village. It started raining about half way up and by the time we reached the cross roads at the top, it was pouring. We remained in full waterproofs the rest of the day.

Going straight across the cross roads and on westward along the Old Coach Road towards Keswick we quite quickly picked up the post marking the footpath that crosses Sandbeds Moss, Barbaryrigg Moss, Whitesike Moss and a whole load of other bogs. We were wet up to our calves in water in the first 50 metres, after that it was bog plugging till we reached Lobbs Farm some 2k later.

Passing through Wallthwaite and Guardhouse we eventually joined the path along the River Greta then swapped to the old Penrith to Keswick railway line outside Threlkeld.  Here I think we made a mistake, which had some bearing on the next days walks, with hindsight we should have diverted into Threlkeld  to get something  to eat and drink in the warm and dry and have a rest. We didn’t as we thought Keswick was not too far away and as the YHA is open all day we could go straight in get warm etc.

The railway walk is great, I’ve done some of it before, but this time in the rain it seemed to go on for ever. Even so we were impressed by the bridges, if I remember correctly 8 railway ones over the river, 2 road ones over the railway and river?, a tunnel and the boardwalk diversion.  Also impressive was the state of the river, dingy brown with white foam, with large volumes of water pouring in off the hills. We reached Keswick YHA at about 4:00pm with 13.8mile on the GPS.

Washing done and shoes stuffed with newspaper and put in the drying room we walked into town and had terrific meals in the Keswickian Fish and Chip shop, restaurant (downstairs) opposite the Moot House and had a few beers in the Dog and Gun, it was still raining when we left.