There’s a song that begins with the phrase: I love to go a wandering
The reason things have been a bit quiet on this blog is the past 2 weeks I was hiking in England. Four of us (women friends) teamed up and after a few months of planning off we went! We hiked in Cumbrian counties (the Lake District)northwest England generally.
Two people in the group had hiked before and they gave the remaining two some great advice on what to pack and what not to pack. If I was going to sum it up it would be: pack light, take lots of things that can be layered, waterproof gear is essential and be prepared to wear the same things over and over again. There were no fashion forward sightings on this trip. And as the lyrics state in the song above, we did have knapsacks on our back.
We stayed in and visited the city of York, the village and surrounds of Kirkby Stephen (pronounced Kirby Stephen), the city of Carlisle the town of Windermere and the city of Manchester.
We did our own booking and basically followed the motto:
I thought I’d do a few blogs on the trip.
Stats and facts from our trip
- Weather-wettest April on record (we did have many nice days too)
- There is never enough room for luggage on the trains
- Personal losses-one pedometer, one tip from a walking pole (in some awful muck going up a ‘fell’), one camera battery and no weight
- Personal gains-getting to know people better, a new appreciation of waterproof gear, enjoying the hospitality and friendly manner of the Brits (speaking of hospitality, when I lost my pedometer Mary, proprietor of the Warwick Guest Lodge in Carlisle gave me hers to keep as she said she didn’t use it!), varied and beautiful scenery
- We hiked a total of 157 km in 14 days-an average of 11.2 km/day.
- Total steps 250,000!
And another thing that is important when traveling in a wet cool April/May in northern England is a hat that you can tie on! One that will remain down and locked when the weather forecast calls for “gale force” winds. 
Barb's True Stories 
Sounds like a wonderful experience. The country sideis beautiful and for weather, your previous training in Saskatchewan should have given you a slight edge. As you well know we can have four seasons in one week. Enjoy your True Stories and missed you. Bev
You are right. Saskatchewan and leading Girl Guides provided some valuable training. The country side is lovely, isn’t it. Thanks for the comment Bev. I missed blogging-thought I might do some while away but between walking and gawking and refuelling, well, that was pretty much a day.
What a great trip you had. Damp and all. Keep moving or grow moss on your north sides had to be someone’s advice. 12 km per day is pretty good walking. And averaging 0.6 meters per step is pretty fair striding up hill and down. And no one killed anyone.
You take in those stats with lightning speed. Yes it was a wonderful trip. We thought we did well in terms of trekking since several of those days were travel days. The wisdom of wearing comfortable shoes shines through on walking holidays.
I live and breath stats. If some of those days were travel days, you did more than 12 km per day on walking days, then.
Every time someone says “comfortable shoes” I am reminded of the line from Good Morning, Vietnam. “the beaches were protected by dikes. Large women in comfortable shoes saying don’t go near the water”. Graeme used to know the entire movie by heart and would often recite it while shooting baskets.
Yes we did. I think 17km was my max for one day and it was enough. Beyond that would feel like a job.
Both my Dad and Grandpa were stationed near York during their respective war years.
Betty’s Bar was one of Dad’s hang outs. I visited there in 1978.
We never saw Betty’s Bar but there are several Betty’s tea rooms. Perhaps Betty decided to branch out into the white glove and little-sandwiches-with-no-crusts set. That’s something that both your father and grandfather would be stationed in the same vicinity a continent away.