Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

River Brathay at Skelwith Bridge

We set out on day 6 with some intrepidation. I'd settled things with the farmer that morning, who was fine with us stopping there ("not to wurry!") He mentioned that the radio weather had put out a warning for the afternoon, expecting 2 to 4 inches of rain during the next 24 hours. That's a lot of rain! The most we'd had was an inch on our first night wild camping (we knew it was an inch because we left our mugs outside for the evening.) Perhaps it was saving it up for a proper effort for us, since the night just past had been our first without rain (a rare night of peace for Lake District tent dwellers.)

Our route for the day was an easy one, following the Cumbria Way up Great Langdale to the National Trust campsite near Old Dungeon Ghyll. Originally I'd planned to take the high ground over the Langdale Pikes, but Yaël's knee made this a rather bad idea. I wanted to give it as much of a rest as possible before our final day of trekking, which unavoidably required crossing a 700m pass (climbing more than 600m, our highest single climb of the trip) if we were to take the quickest and (in theory) easiest route. (Next trip we'll leave Yaël's knee at home!)

Waterfall

The walk up Great Langdale via the Cumbria Way is mostly flat, entirely firm, and extremely attractive. Especially the section of the river Brathay after (west of) Skelwith Bridge, where the river is in a treed ravine complete with waterfalls.

We made our way to Elterwater in good time, and stopped there for a beer in their pub. Yet more excellent Cumbrian ale! While we were sitting there the rain started in earnest and we were reluctant to move on in a hurry, which was fine as we didn't have very far to go this day. In a short while the rain cleared and we move on.

The next leg of walking was just under 4km, getting us to New Dungeon Ghyll. This pub was just a bit too polished for my liking, with the sort of shiny printed menus and little sauce packets that scream out "chainpub" to me. It felt just a little too much like it was designed to make the cityfolk feel "at home." On top of this it probably had the least inspiring range of ale I'd seen in a Cumbrian pub. They did good chips though!

The Band (right) ramp to tomorrow's pass

From New Dungeon Ghyll it was a mere kilometre to the Great Langdale National Trust campsite. The campsite was quite busy, school holidays were about to begin and the vanguard of early-leavers had made their way here to claim their ground already. We walked as far away from the amenities as we could to find a fairly lightly populated area at the western extremity of the site, near what I called "the yurts." (Some sort of large permanent tent, complete with chimney. Camping for people who don't really like camping I guess. The people we saw wandering between the yurts, "yurt dwellers", and the amenities certainly didn't seem all that camp.) There were some others scouting out the same area, so we politely let them choose their ground first. They were an intriguing couple, dressed in a metal/goth style. Apparently they come up this way every year, and just chill out in their tent and do a bit of hill walking. The parts of the ground that were known to flood were pointed out to us, and we choose a slightly higher patch on a good slope (since we were expecting the worst from the rain overnight.)

Once our tents were up we wandered out of the campsite to the pub at Old Dungeon Ghyll. This was a real pub, with several good ales available. We sat here for a little while and enjoyed a couple of pints before returning to the campsite. The campsite is a particularly pleasant one, especially our spot below a bank planted with coniferous trees of some sort. I wandered up into the trees to gather sticks for our little wood burning stove and took several photos out towards "The Band" our route up to the pass we had to cross the next day.

Pitch at Gt. Langdale NT Campsite

We chilled for the rest of the evening, our most relaxed evening so far I think. We'd got to the campsite very early, by our standards, and as a bonus it wasn't raining on us! The main entertainment for the evening was watching a couple nearby arrive quite late and then set up their tent. A massive and insanely complicated construction that they'd clearly never put up before (brand new from the shop I expect.) Both our little tents would have fit inside it and not even touched the walls. These people had everything they even pulled a full sized gas BBQ out of the back of their suburban assault vehicle. It took them a full couple of hours to get their tent up, thwacking pegs with mallets well into the evening.

An easy walk of just over 10km this day, very pleasant and relaxed overall. No massive downpours so far!