Easter Camp 2006
Easter Camp 2006 was held once again at the Rydal Hall campsite near Ambleside, due to the sucess of last years camp. This time we were accompanied by Derrick, and this meant the van - so I was able to bring an absurd quantity of stuff. With Derrick having similar thoughts, my tent ended up containing a TV, DVD player, gas fire, microwave, 2Kw mains inverter & battery bank, 2 cookers, and even a carpet amonst other less essential things such as food, coolboxes and all that. So all in all, these extra luxuries made up for the fact that someone forgot to pack the kitchen sink, but that didn't bother us too much as there was already one at the campsite.
This is extreme survival...
Anyway, the weather was great just like last year, so we managed to fill the weekend with activities as usual. On the first day, after leaving Duffield at 5am, we visited Keswick, and had a look around the outdoors shops and a few of the electrical appliance stores just in case we had forgotten anything. That evening we watched a DVD and planned the next day, which was a hike up Helvellyn.
All set up finally and watching a DVD!!
We got an early start the next morning, and drove to Thirlmere, where the walk would start from. Parking in that area is never easy at any time during the Easter weekend, especially if the weather is half decent but we did manage to find somewhere to abandon the car. The hike itself went from the car park at Thirlmere to the top, and back down. A total duration of just under 4 hours. We were going to walk Striding edge and do a bit of a circular route, but with all the ice and snow, that would probably have not been such a good idea. We returned back to camp and started to chill out a bit, before I suddenly realised that Michael and Helen had started to cook an extraordinarily large stir fry in my tent, in a fullsize wok! Awesome, real food on camp. That night we watched another DVD, and didn't drink a drop of alcohol. Honest.
Adam climbing up from Thirlmere
Snow!! Thirlmere reservoir at the bottom
It's real!
One of the bits we avoided
Next day was the 'do whatever, but do something' day. Myself and Adam set
off with the bikes to Coniston, in search of the new North Face trail in
Grizedale. If you have any idea where those two places are, you'll realise
that we went to the wrong place. We soon realised this when we looked at
the map, in search of an answer to the question, "so where do we start?".
Never mind, we set off in the general direction of the Grizedale trail,
but decided to do a circular route of Coniston instead, to save on distance.
Bizarrely, when we returned to Coniston after the ride, I purchased a copy
of MBR (mountain bike rider) only to realise shortly afterwards that the
North Face trail was featured on teh front page - complete with a route
guide. Perfect for my return to the lakes a month later.
My bike, & Coniston Water
We returned to the campsite to find another stir fry in progress! That was
followed by another night similar to before, with the gas fire on watching
a DVD. The next day we would be packing and setting off down the M6 back
towards Derby. Considering we were camping, the only way I could differentiate
between my tent and the house was that the floor was slightly uneven. Never
mind, we'll just pack some floorboards next time.
Out site at Rydal Hall
Bang!! Arrgghh. My usual trick, not so effective nowadays. Walking to
Ambleside fro the campsite.
So it was another great Easter camp at the Rydal Hall site. I'd recommend the site to any other group that wants a good camp near what is probably the capital of outdoors shops in the UK (Ambleside) - just don't book pitch 12 at the same time as us!! :p
The great packing session begins
- Andy