Thursday 24th
Our night at Langsett hadn't been entirely undisturbed. At around 1am I'd heard car doors slamming and an engine running. At 6am there was more car door slamming. At 7am I stepped outside and found that there was no sign of the family who had been camped in front of us. I deduce they didn't have the most comfortable of nights, had warmed up in the car in the middle of the night and had started packing away soon after first light.
The weather had dried up overnight, so as I set out for a jaunt on Midhope Moor...
...it was overcast but not in a threatening way. The moorland circuit I did was most pleasing, at least until about 1km from the end, when I just needed to cross the dam to get to the lane back to the campsite, whereupon I came upon this sign:
I'd already spied highways vehicles with flashing lights blocking the dam and had thought it didn't look promising, and this sign just confirmed it. My heart sank, as I really wasn't in the market for an extra 5km to go back around the water. After a slightly melodramatic text to Mick, I looked at the map and realised that heading downstream to the next bridge would only add on 1km, albeit at the expense of having to negotiate the verge of the main road for about 800m.
Back at the campsite, I test out the shower in the toilet/shower trailer (perfectly adequate), then we were off to Halifax for me to mow the lawns at Ma-in-Law's house.
Then off to Clifton we went, where we were sitting in the bar with a crossword when Ali & Adrian arrived. Not only did they treat us to a very nice tea...
Only snapped the starters. The souffle was deceptively filling.
...but they'd also gained permission for us to stay on the staff car park, around the back, overnight. It was so hot in the restaurant, that we escaped to Bertie for post-dinner tea/coffee, but it wasn't a late night.
Friday 25th
Where was Bertie? He spent the night at Crossfells Campsite in Clifton at a cost of £17 for a hard-standing pitch. Electricity was available for an extra £6.
By mid-morning we felt like we should probably vacate the staff car park, so headed up to Penrith, as I had a parcel I needed to take to a post office. It turns out that Penrith is not motorhome friendly, and it took a bit of driving around before we found suitable parking - on the road outside of the cricket club, a ten minute walk from town.
We'd been so full after last night's meal that neither of us had eaten at breakfast time, but by the time we arrived in Penrith we weren't averse to the thought of something to eat, so a very late breakfast was had before we located the post office.
The traffic getting out of Penrith was dire, with roadworks disrupting any flow, but we weren't in any rush and eventually we popped out the other side of the holdups, from where it was plain sailing to our campsite.
When Ali had said that they were staying at the George and Dragon (and without even thinking about the possibility of staying in their car park) I'd checked out nearby campsites and found this one, with a public footpath leading across the field between campsite and pub. We'd ended up not needing it on Thursday night, but thought we may as well stay there on Friday, with it being a convenient drive from Pooley Bridge, where we wanted to arrive early on Saturday morning.
The campsite turned out to be a little gem. The owner (who we didn't meet, but I talked to someone who knows him) has a motorhome and wanted to create a campsite that he'd like to stay on. I assume he also decided to price it at a level that he would like to pay, as it offered good value. The hard-standing pitches were level, each has an optional hook up point, its own water tap and a patch of grass with a picnic bench (yep, one for every single pitch). On top of that the toilets were the smartest I've ever seen in the category of 'toilets housed in a garden shed', and were clean too.
We did nothing for the rest of the day, although we did have some evening entertainment, when the campers near to us went to go out and realised the key to their motorbike was missing. The search was extensive and went on for over two hours (and having previously lost a key in grass, we had every sympathy; I vetoed going to assist the search on the basis that with the current states of our backs, we weren't in a fit state to be crawling around in the grass. It was only later, when we were in bed, that it occurred to me that they were probably trying to go out for food, and we could have assisted by offering to cook them something). We were tucked up in bed by the time we finally heard their bike start up, although we didn't know whether they'd ever found their key, or whether someone had brought them a spare. I also heard them return at 3am.
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