Hiking and camping in The Lakes District!

I have been wanting to go to The Lakes District National Park for quite a while. It's in the north of England, near the boarder with Scotland. According to photos, it looks absolutely beautiful and a great outdoors destination so I knew that I would have to see it. Over the last long weekend holiday for Lee we did just that! Also, Lee told me that has never done "real" camping before, in a tent! Nor had he done long hikes (I've gone backpacking). I was super excited to introduce him to a few new things that I love. I found a great campsite that didn't allow any campers which is just what I wanted. It has clean bathrooms and great views. What else could you want in a campsite? So Friday morning we headed out.

The drive took longer than expected because of traffic. Neither of us are used to the amount of traffic they have here but it is an island and there are only so many different ways to get places. When we got close to the campsite, we headed off of the motorway and onto some interesting roads... It was at least a two lane for a while but there were some major inclines/declines like 12%! I was very glad that Lee was driving. Other than that, it was okay until we turned onto a one lane road. Oh gosh. Can you say hairpin turns on one hundred foot drop offs with no guard rails? And of course, I was on the side of the car with the drop offs so I was slightly terrified. Also, remember that it was a one lane? That was fun. But somehow we survived the harrowing journey and arrived at the camp.

We set up tent and started to set up camp and realized we forgot a lighter for the grill. Crap. We had to head back on my terrifying road to the local store. Luckily it was close so crisis adverted. After setting everything up we decided to head out for a bit of a hike. We found a bunch of trails just a short walk away from our campsite so it was great fun. On the trails, you had to be careful because there were sheep everywhere! And they poop. A lot. But other than that, it was a great time just exploring around. Since there was no light pollution, the stars were amazing! We didn't get any pictures because we were too huddled up inside the tent but oh well, next time!

Going over the fence!

Eventually we headed back to camp. It got freezing in the night so we had to put on a ton of layers to not become icicles in the middle of the night. Definitely not Florida weather. We woke up bright and early the next morning to head out on a long hike. We packed our day bags with all the essentials and headed out. It was beautiful out! We were lucky because there was a 50% chance of rain but the weather that weekend was just perfect (although warmer could be better!).

Basically to find a hiking spot, we headed toward the hills and tracks that said "not suitable for cars." We figured that was for us! We started out on a paved trail going up and didn't know what we were in for. Eventually the paved trail turned into a rocky trail. And big rocks too! You could not look up from your feet for risk of messing up an ankle. Also, this trail the whole time was going up. There were no flat parts, it was just up, up, up! My legs were burning! Every little bit felt like a mile! I sure was breathing like I was doing a marathon... but we kept it up!

Going up!

Those views!

Once we got the the top of the first hill, we realized that it was a baby hill, we had a lot higher to go. We continued on up and as we went, it got colder and windier! At the top of the next hill, we took a break and kept going. There was always a taller hill to climb and it was great fun (as long as I didn't have to get too close to the edge!)! And always good spots to set up the tripod for some couple shots! At some parts there were some hand over hand climbing on rocks so it was really exciting. And the views were fabulous! We could even see our campsite which looked tiny!

Super cold and windy!

On top of the world!

Something random that we both liked was how friendly the British hikers were. Normally British people don't smile and say "hi" on the street like Americans. They're not being rude, it's just not their culture. But all the hikers did! It was like a "hey, you're crazy like me so I will acknowledge you!" So it was fun talking with everybody. Anyways, for the record, we never stopped going up the whole time. Eventually we got as far was we wanted to go because we wanted some dinner and turned around. Also, it was super freezing and windy!

Our day in a nutshell.

Coming back, I had to climb to the top of a rock formation that I avoided doing the first time. My fear of heights was a slight issue there but luckily I had Lee to help me through it. For some reason, we thought that going back down would be easier than going up. Probably just a lie we told ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Doing sports my whole life, I've kind of killed my knees. I even tore my meniscus in pole vault. Going downhill was terribly painful on my knees since it was so steep and nonstop. Ugh.

On top of my dreaded rock formation.

Breathtaking!

During the whole hike, Lee was a tracker on his phone going to record our stats. We started at 493 feet elevation and climbed to 2,490 feet! And we were hiking for a total of 6.5 hours! it was about 7 miles total! The whole climb was either uphill or downhill! After returning to the campsite, we went to a local pub since neither of us felt like cooking and had a wonderful meal. We also had ice cream cones since we deserved it. We headed back to camp for good and relaxed for a while. At one point, a British couple offered us two burgers with all the trimmings (they had more than they could eat) so we took those and made them some s'mores as a thank you. S'mores aren't a thing here so they had never heard of them but really enjoyed the treat!

Some sunset from camp

All in all, it was a great weekend! We had a great time! I am super sore today and my knees are shot (I'm hobbling today) but it was so worth it! It was so pretty there!