Carry on Camping - Part 1

One of the things which struck me most about marriage was how long it took to pack for a camping trip. Back in my single days I could throw everything I needed into a backpack and be on my way in 10-15 minutes. Drop a wife into the mix and it now takes me that long to carry the things to the front door. I pack only the things I can't possibly do without. Dear Wife packs everything we might conceivably find a use for.

Pete has not only a (charming) wife, Mary, but two kids as well and as I was tagging along on this trip, making everything fit into his truck was something of a Chinese Puzzle. Bikes, a canoe, food and bag after bag after bag - it took a fair bit of head scratching and ingenuity, but somehow we managed it and by late morning we were on our way.

I haven't been to Coniston in many years, although once upon a time I spent every summer weekend here, windsurfing. By that I mean, sitting on the beach, drinking beer and gossiping, and every now and then claiming I would go out "once the wind picked up a bit." It's still as breathtakingly pretty as ever though and the homesickness emotions were on overdrive.

I generally make a point to avoid public campsites, particularly on holiday weekends, and it was with a little apprehension that I noticed just how crowded this one was. There was very little room between the tents and as every group seemed to have a dozen or more kids, I was wondering how I was going to cope with 3 days of this. But you know what? It was great. Everyone was incredibly friendly and as we were meeting up with a group whom Pete & Mary have camped with before; there was a wonderfully social atmosphere.


Putting up the family's trailer tent was an exercise in ingenuity, but I'm sleeping in Pete's (very) old hike tent, which was up in moments. Windbreaks were hammered into the ground, bikes, canoes and other assorted toys were unloaded from the truck and the whole thing brought back long lost memories of caravan trips back in my own childhood. And surprisingly positive memories too. The plastic plates, the wind blowing everything off the table, the hike to the spigot at the far end of the campsite to fetch water…ah, happy days.

Pete had only just bought his canoe and it had yet to take its maiden voyage so I was press-ganged into service as front paddler. Despite the sunshine, the wind was truly ferocious and even with two little boys and a dog in the bottom for ballast, it was hard going. Every few minutes the bow (for all you landlubbers, that's the front) would start to swing, then the wind would catch it and push it further around while Pete and I dug frantically into the water in attempt to pull her back on course. I don't know about the captain, but the first mate was knackered.

Finally, we hove to at the snack bar and treated ourselves to an ice cream to stave off scurvy. Should be OK on the way back we thought, the wind will be behind us. Wrong again, it was just as hard paddling this way because now it was the stern (back end) that wanted to pull round sideways. We learned later that we'd been doing it all wrong of course, but hey, where's the fun of being intrepid explorers if you aren't figuring this stuff out for yourself.

Open fires weren't allowed on the campsite, but Pete the engineer had crafted an enclosed brazier type thing out of the drum from an old washing machine. With its tripod legs, it had room for plenty of wood and gave off a surprising amount of heat. It seemed like the entire campsite was congregated around it, but as everyone was sharing food, and beer, it was one heckuva party.

The last time I slept in a tent on a public campground, I was kept awake by deafening country music and the sounds of rednecks partying. Given how crowded this campsite was, I wasn't sure how loud it would be tonight. But refreshingly, by 10 pm or so, the place was blissfully peaceful and soon, I was sleeping the sleep of the just.

Although being half-sozzled by the time I crawled into my sleeping bag no doubt helped.

Striding Edge

Hellvellyn isn’t a lofty peak. At 3,117 feet (950 meters) above sea level, it isn’t even the highest in the English Lakes. When I walk up my stairs at home, I’m climbing to a height almost three times as high and Mt. Evans, visible from my back yard and topping out at 14,240 feet (4,340 meters) positively dwarfs it.

So you get the point, it’s not exactly Everest we’re talking about here. Then what brings hikers to Hellvellyn by the thousand, every single year? That would be the view from the top. Located as it is, on the eastern side of the breathtakingly pretty corner of England that is the Lake District, the summit vista looks out across the smaller hills, over the lake known as Ullswater (itself no slouch in the prettiness stakes), and out to the plains of Yorkshire. On the "Wow!" factor, it’s way up there.

Every few years the British summer weather cooperates enough to provide a clear night sky on Midsummer’s Eve and scores of people trek to the top in order to enjoy the (very) early morning sunrise. I did it three times in my life; once as a kid with my parents, the second two fueled by a gallon or so of Guinness from the pub prior to setting out. The sunrise turns the mountains from black to purple, while Ullswater glints like a pool of mercury in the foreground. Each time it was magical and if the person, who has the photographs I took the last time, and subsequently lost, is reading this, I’d very much like them back.

Back when I lived in the Lakes, I covered many, although not all of the peaks. In addition to the night-time jaunts, I tackled Hellvellyn several times during daylight hours and enjoyed each one but one thing I never attempted, was the route known as “Striding Edge”. So when Steve suggested it during my visit, I jumped at the chance. Graeme decided to tag along too and as the three of us spent a good chunk of our formative years in each others’ company; it was just like old times.

Striding Edge didn’t get its name because one can "stride" along it. One would be very ill advised to do so, even if one were physically capable, which one is almost certainly not. No, the term "Striding" in this sense, means "To Stand Astride". In other words, you can put one foot on each side of the knife-edge ridge. What makes Striding Edge different from other ridgeline paths is not only is it a very rocky scramble, but that if you were to stand upon it, and take a good look around, you would see nothing but fresh air.

The ground sweeps away dramatically on both sides and as the path itself is something of a hand over hand scramble, this is not a good hike for a windy day, or for someone afraid of heights, or open spaces, or anyone with balance issues. Nonetheless, each year several nutmegs give it a go and the mountain rescue teams are used to scraping people off the rocks below.

It wasn’t at all windy when we set off from the town of Glenridding, around mid-morning. The day was warm and a shade muggy, which made me feel ever so glad I’d accidentally left my shorts up in Scotland ad was tackling the hike in jeans. I was also a shade concerned at how hard I was blowing during the early stages. What’s all this about living at altitude and reaping the benefits when descending to lower elevation? I consoled myself with the thought that I had got pretty hammered while watching the European Championship (real football) in the pub the night before and that once I sweated the stale beer out of my pores, all would be well.

And indeed it was. By the time we’d stopped for the first bite of our packed lunches and had admired the view for the umpteenth time, I was raring to go. Striding Edge doesn’t arrive until you’re tantalizingly close to the top and when you see it for the first time, it’s with a "Crap, is that where we’re going?" feeling.

"Scary is good" said Steve as a rejoinder to Graeme’s and my whining, uhm astute observations. And that’s true enough – in the right circumstances. On a roller coaster perhaps, or during a horror movie. I just didn’t happen to think that balanced on a rock with nothing but hundreds of feet down on either side was not the right circumstances and each time my sweaty jeans clung to my leg and prevented me from gaining the inch or so I needed to complete the step onto the next rock, I had reason to reflect on this.

Steve on the other hand, was more concerned about his wee dog, scampering along excitedly on the end of its lead. "My wife doesn’t care about me" he explained, "But if I lose the dog, I might as well not go home." Graeme was something of a concern too, being considerably older than Steve and I. (Almost a year older than me and several weeks ahead of Steve) but the decrepit old codger seemed to be doing OK.

It didn’t help that we got stuck in a traffic jam of sorts, behind two ladies who really had no business being up there in the first place. While it was sensible tactics to consider foot placement in advance of each step, this pair were deliberating to a level that would make a Bedouin camel trader weep. I’m not known for my patience at the best of times and I’d already considered a hundred ways to "accidentally" push them down one side or the other but, aware that the two guys watching from up ahead were not only with them, but both bigger than me, I chose not to. See me? See karma points?

Finally, we were able to wiggle past them and in a surprisingly short time were standing atop the summit. A couple of dozen other people were up here already but as most of them had come up the easy way from the west side (hah!), they were of no concern to us. It was cool up here, causing sweatshirts and woolly pullys to be removed from the daypacks and we had to find some shelter from the wind before finishing lunch. And the haze in the valleys meant the view wasn’t quite as crisp as we’d hoped. But it was still pretty darn good for all that.

By the time Midsummer's Eve rolled around this year, I was firmly ensconced back in the States. Views to the east of here look out over the city, and rather than the plains of Yorkshire in the distance, we have the prairie stretching all the way to the Great Lakes, a thousand miles away. I didn't climb a hilltop this year but I did spend some time reflecting on my previous night hikes up Hellvellyn. I wonder if I'll ever do that again.

One thing's for sure though - if I do climb it in the dark, it won't be up Striding Edge.

You can't go home again - Part 2

So the last couple of Gunsmoke Files dealt with my visits to Bannockburn and Stirling Castle, which both happen to be just down the road from my birthplace of Larbert. What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? Why, it’s famous for uhm...well remember in the Laurel and Hardy films...remember the angry guy with the black moustache that was always on the wrong end of their mischief? Well, he was from there.

Although Larbert isn’t my home town in any real sense of the word. The people who claim to be my parents spirited me away at the tender age of two and transported me over the border to England where I grew up (in the loosest sense of the word) in a little town called Kendal, population 26,000 or so.

I haven’t been back in 8 years and even then it was just a quick visit, so I was looking forward to wandering about and seeing just how much the old place had changed. I was kipping with my friend Steve and his family, but he wouldn’t be home from work for some time so after dropping off my bag, I set out on a wander. Steve’s house sits at the base of Castle Hill, which has some of the best views of the town. Yeah I know, another castle, but don’t worry - this one won’t take long.

It’s a ruin, you see, and has been for some time. The family of Queen Katherine Parr once owned this place and as I’m sure you know, she was the 6th wife of King Henry the 8th and the only one to out live the syphilitic old git. I doubt they’d recognize the place now; it being little more than some tumbledown walls but it’s been cleaned up a lot since I last visited and these days it has plaques and signs all over the place telling you exactly what used to be there. From this I learned that our childhood guesses were apparently way off the mark. What we decided were the stables were in fact the kitchen, the dungeon was merely a storeroom and so on.

The view duly admired from all angles, I took myself down the far side of the hill and into the town proper. And yes, the place had changed. But not quite as much as I was expecting it to have. Yes, the one-way traffic flow had been re-routed so now cars were hurtling at me from the left where I was expecting them to come at me from the right. And there were buildings where empty spaces used to be. But mostly it looked much the same, albeit much sunnier than it ever was when I lived there.

I had a lot of fun trying to remember what used to be in a specific location but was oddly surprised to see certain shops still looking exactly the same. Interestingly it seemed to be the crappy places, charity stores and amusement arcades that had survived, most of the upscale shops had changed. My favorite bookstore for example, had returned to the location it had occupied when I was a child, having moved back from the one it had occupied when I was an adult. Who says you can’t go home again?

In a town of 26,000 people, you get to know a lot of folk, especially if like me, you work with the public. And also when you invest most of your time, money and energy into cultivating an active social life, (OK, by “active social life”, I mean I went out drinking every night, but then you knew that) you tend to become something of a familiar face. So it was entertaining in a mildly frustrating way to walk past someone and find myself wondering “OK, who the heck was that; where do I know them from?” Sometimes I would steal a look over my shoulder to see if I could better identify them and would catch them doing the same thing; obviously trying to recall who the heck I was.

I wasn’t always sure if I actually knew the person, or if I was just used to seeing them around. Occasionally I would be confident enough to exchange the traditional north of England greeting ("Hiya, y’areet?") but even then, I rarely managed to put a name to the face although sometimes I would figure it out a little later along the street. On one notable occasion I realized that the woman at whom I had stared quizzically a little earlier was in fact Mary, wife of Pete, the friends with whom I was going camping in a couple of days. Never the stranger to social awkwardness, me.

Even the jewelry store where I used to work had changed, having expanded into the space next door. I’d been told about this, but it still seemed a little odd to see it. Some of my co-workers were still there though, even though it’s now 17 years since I sold my last bauble. So, I stayed for a while, distracting them from their labors while they brought me up to speed on the local gossip.

I’d called in with the intent of dragging my friend Graeme out to the pub, but somewhat predictably, he wasn’t around. He’s the boss and in true management fashion was off taking care of personal errands while the staff did all the work.

It’s good to know some things never change.