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 
