Camping in the Lakes

by Phil Long

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This weekend was a fun one – especially as the weather was rather kind. A group of us headed to the Lake District camping – which has to have been my first camping trip since Stainsby Folk Festival back in 2000.

We stayed at a site called Park Gate which was in a pleasant area near Ravenglass. The site itself had the basics – toilet and sinks, and stones ready for camp fires. No showers. The owners were very pleasant and came round each day selling firewood (which came in handy when what we bought from a Texaco garage wasn’t quite enough to satisfy our need to burn stuff).

Getting there was… interesting. I managed to get the address wrong so the directions I followed on the iPhone took me somewhere near Hawkshead. Once I got to Ambleside I felt that we were probably not in the right place, and getting to Hawkshead confirmed it. I eventually got a reasonable enough EDGE connection and located the right place; some 25 miles away over the hills. Nearly two hours and a very fun drive (seriously, it was nice to try my car on the winding country roads and hills) later we arrived at the correct place – just as the rain stopped and it started brightening. I had a beer and a rest then put my tent up. I say I put it up, but really I took it out the bag and others pretty much did it for me as I looked so useless; in fairness I was given the tent and hadn’t taken it out of the bag before. I think I’ll get a better and bigger tent for Glastonbury next month.

After the tent was done we had a quick bite to eat from the barbeque, pictured here:

A little later we went for a walk and found a pub to have our evening meal from (Steak!) before heading back to the camp site, getting the fire roaring, and drinking a quantity of alcohol.

A late night was followed by an equally early morning – and the sun was out for a beautiful Sunday. We recovered from the night before for most of the morning, enjoying the sun, before heading to Ravenglass followed by Muncaster Castle and grounds.

The evening started with a barbeque again before we headed to a beach near Ravenglass for the sunset. The destination was partly because Kate and Paul wanted to check out a geocache nearby. We got a little lost and I ended up turning around at the entrance to some kind of waste site that seemed like it might be a bit of a military-like base. We got to the beach which was nicely marked with an MOD sign warning of markers and gun testing. I took some photos of the sunset until a police car arrived and seemed to take a keen interest in us and my car.

They followed us to Ravenglass before eventually heading off. I hoped to get some nice pictures across the bay there; but that turned out to be a bit rubbish because the tide was out. Unfortunate timing. Dave introduced us to Pinchy, the crab, who we hoped would become a friend to us all – until Jane panicked and dropped the poor thing. We’ll miss him.