Wednesday 5 May - Coniston

Where's Bertie? He's still on his pitch at Coniston Park Coppice.
Weather: Yesterday was decidedly damp until late afternoon, whereas today was mainly sunny. Still far cooler than I would prefer.

The plan for this trip was that I would run Troutbeck to Coniston on Monday and Mick would run on Tuesday. We would then do little but potter today and most of tomorrow, before a night-run tomorrow (mainly driven by a desire to see if our head torches are up to the job, as in July it will be dark by the time we reach Ambleside).

The plan got scuppered by Mick suddenly developing a sore knee. Not debilitating, but not the sort of thing he wants to risk making worse. So, instead of him trotting off into the rain yesterday morning, we had an extremely lazy start to the day and finally headed out for a walk into Coniston (there via the old railway line; back via the lake path) in the afternoon.

Today dawned bright, but with a chill that didn't have me leaping out of bed eager to don flimsy clothing and rush outside. Thus it was 0830 before I was ready to go, whereupon Mick suddenly made a move to come with me, albeit only as far as Coniston.

I continued on to complete a 15km circuit via Tilberthwaite, taking in the final few miles of the Lakeland 50 route that I'd omitted on Monday. As I ascended today I couldn't be sorry to have missed this section two days ago, as it proved to be so spectacular that it would have been a shame to do it in foul weather, with low cloud and my head down.

I took lots of photos:

You probably can't see the amount of snow on the more distant tops in the bottom left snap, but there was quite a covering

I was back at Bertie a couple of hours after setting off, which left plenty of day free, so after a few more hours of lazing around* we popped out to walk a circuit to Torver.

Returning via the lake path

Apparently we've got some more sunny weather tomorrow morning, before rain comes in during the afternoon, so I'm hatching a knee-friendly plan to take advantage of it.

^{(*We're pitched overlooking a toilet block. They're running a very simple system to ensure there are no more than three people in either ladies or the gents at any one time: you take a wristband out of a bucket of Milton solution and hang it on a peg. If all pegs are taken, you can't enter. On exiting, you deposit a wristband back into the Milton bucket. All very well in theory, but it's amazing how many people are just ignoring the system (presumably because they haven't read the information given out at reception when booking in and don't feel the need to read the big notice at eye level on the toilet doors either). It's largely the same people who don't put a face covering on to enter the facilities either.)}