A beginner's guide to survival bag sledging. [And a power cut.]

Friday December 26^th – Boxing Day.

Another coldish and clear morning awaited us this morning so after a swifter dog walk than usual and a wolfed breakfast by all parties we arrived at the elbow in the road that marks the start of the Spout Force Waterfall walk. Our rucksacks were packed with lunch, snacks, hot drinks and plenty of waterproof outer layers for both ourselves and two of the dogs.

The climb up to the summit of Greystones is a killer from where we parked, so we did a major detour to Spout Force itself and then wound our way up through the woods to come out on the same slope but three quarters of the way up, without having expended anywhere near as much effort and energy as if we’d walked straight up the path. When I last did this walk, the track behind Spout Force has suffered from gale damage and it was criss-crossed with fallen trees. This made route following a challenge as I had to either scrawm below a fallen trunk or clamber over one. This time the very nice people at the Forestry Commission (who manage the woodland) had been down and sawn through the offending trunks to make the way clear again.

The summit of Greystones was clear of frozen white stuff but very cold. The wind was howling in from the south west and it was so strong if you jumped up in the air you landed a couple of feet away from your take off point. We decided not to stay and relax just here, we thought we’d have a swift sip from a flask in the shelter of the plantation on the way to the summit of Broom Fell. A good idea, as it was as calm as a summer’s day (without the heat) and we perched on a boulder each to have a cuppa and a biscuit.

On top of Broom itself was just as windy as Greystones so we didn’t linger overlong. We stopped to inspect the view and for the Lollster to snap a few pictures and then on we yomped to the highest point of the walk; Lord’s Seat. Unlike Blake Fell, on Christmas Eve, here there was a sprinkling of snow. It was still like being inside a wind-machine in a fridge on top but the glistening white stuff brought out the bright orange plastic for a swift bout of survival bag sledging.

This is brilliant despite the fact Charlie dog runs alongside you as you hurtle down the slope and then launches himself onto your back (probably in a misguided canine attempt to prevent you heading to your doom). There is a good run down from the summit to a stock fence which acts as a natural barrier to your progress. We were the only two on the summit when we started throwing ourselves down the hill on thin sheets of plastic but another couple of people (man & woman) arrived from the direction of Whinlatter Forest and decided our sledging looked such fun they had to join in on their bags. Fortunately, Charlie Dog decided not to rescue these newcomers, he spared his attention for Laura and me.

How to sledge on a survival bag (a beginner’s guide).

1.     Extract your survival bag from your rucksack and open it out.

2.     Using the closed end as the top, grasp the top firmly in your gloved hands (wearing gloves is definitely advisable) using each corner of the bag as a pair of makeshift handles.

3.     If you are left handed (like me) hold your bag to the left hand side and started to run down the slope. Right hander, do the reverse.

4.     When you think you have acquired sufficient momentum, throw yourself onto the slope, aiming to bring the bag around in front of you before you hit terra firma. (This can knock the wind out of you if you land stomach first. I try and land elbows and forearms first.) This takes a little practise to finesse.

5.     Pull your hands together in front of your face, keeping hold of the bag’s corners, you ninny! This should make a sort of ship’s prow, pointy effect with your arms and hands.

6.     Sort of use your forearms, elbows and knees to raise as much of your body off the ground as possible to restrict friction.

7.     As you gather speed fell free to yell anything you like at the top of your voice. (Try to avoid obscenities, it frightens the sheep!)

8.     Keep your eyes peeled for renegade chocolate Labradors who think you are in mortal danger and may try to rescue from a fate too terrible to describe here – this usually results in a canine human heap being formed which loses all its aerodynamic properties and grinds to a halt in a sprawling, leggy, snowy, doggy, tangle.

Please note, the author accepts no responsibility for any deaths or serious (or even minor) injuries which arise as a result of following this beginner’s guide. You use the guidelines at your own risk.

After a good half an hour of this reckless fun we stopped for more snacking and hot drink, before dusting ourselves off and heading for Barf, to the east. From here we took the forest road, which lead us straight to the Whinlatter Visitor Centre and Siskins Café, which was not open ! ! Boo Hoo to the power of infinity! We should have asked the people who came up to the summit of Lord’s Seat, so we could have avoided a long walk downhill, which meant a longer walk back uphill to Whinlatter Top and Brown How. Knowing that the café was closed, we could have headed for Whinlatter Top from Tarbarrel Moss and lost hardly any height at all. Still, all the picnic benches etc were outside (as you’d expect) so we ate our lunch and drank some more from our flask and were also able to use the centre’s toilets, which were open despite the centre being closed.

The walk up to Whinlatter Top isn’t too onerous, to be honest and from there, the ridge along to Brown How is delightful. It was still as windy as hell though, and now we were walking into the wind. Dropping down to the plantation we escaped the wind and got a little bit lost in the trees. Eventually, by the simple expedient of always taking the path that went downwards, we arrived at the road which leads to the official Spout Force car park. From here it was a short descent down to the river, across the footbridge and there was Dad’s Landrover waiting to take us all back home. The whole route was about 9 miles long, we must have climbed about 800 metres altogether and we got back to the car at 2.30pm, which means we’d been out about 6 and a bit hours! Phew.

Back at the ranch (as they say) we cleaned up the dogs and then piled into the shower to spruce ourselves up too. Food smells greeted us as we arrived, so a swift rustling up of some rice to go with the Turkey a la king meant we were scoffing for England pretty shortly after the sluicing down.

Our Boxing Day adventures didn’t end here though. We indulged ourselves in some cunning linguistics for the late afternoon and sat to watch some mindless TV in the evening, eschewing social activities for the night as we were quite tired out, TBH. At about 9.30 the lights went out as all the power had gone off! Laura phoned her Mum and they’d lost power too. It seemed the northern half of the village was in darkness, whilst the side facing the National Park still had everything working as normal.

I phoned the power company and the recorded message told us that the situation had been reported and they would be fixing the fault as soon as possible. It may take until 8am tomorrow!

At this point, instead of wallowing in despair, I had a brainwave. Dad’s generator. It was still in the garage, under his workbench. I had to read the manual to see how it worked, then find some engine oil for it and petrol. Once I’d put the oil in and the juice, I switched all the switches, pulled all the levers, said a prayer and pulled the starter rope. It took about six pulls before our saviour spluttered into life. I hoicked it up and carried it the rear verandah where its noise wouldn’t cause any offence to the neighbours ) it is really bloody heavy. The trailing socket I led back into the house and plugged the boiler into it! Hoorah, it worked. Laura had found two more extension leads, a shortish one which we led into the lounge and plugged in two floor lights, I ran the huge long one up through the house into my bedroom and plugged my alarm clock and bedside lights into it. We did a count up of the new power usage and worked out that as it was a 2000 watt genny, we could use the microwave to boil up water for hot drinks, so we ran another extension lead to that. I felt really chuffed that we had sorted the problem simply and quickly and that we were up and running. The house looked a bit weird with wired snaking everywhere and the dogs seemed very confused, especially Izzy, who we kept moving from the cables as she would go and lie on them and she has a habit of chewing new things in her range!

Loll phoned her Mum to invite them to ours if they hadn’t got sorted, but Eric had dug out his generator too, it’s a tiny weeny one, only 650 watts, but enough to do what I’d done with their boiler and lights. They had also found two camping stoves to boil up water for hot drinks. They were OK, so we took the dogs out for a final walk of the day and hit the charp at about 11pm.

Saturday 27^th December.

I got up at about 4.30 to go and refill the genny’s petrol tank just in case it ran out on us, by this time I had thought about fridges as well, so we plugged the fridge into the extension, removing one of the lounge lights from it. I figured that if we didn’t open the freezer it would be good for at least 24 hours before things started to get serious. (Mine is like that anyway, so I hoped Dad’s was too.)

At 7am, just before I wandered up the hill with the dogs I phoned the electricity company whose recorded message still said all the power should be restored by 8 am. I took them all up to the trig point at the top of the hill, which would give the company long enough to have us connected to the grid again. I walked in the door, after drying off the pups at just after 8.10 to see a grim faced Laura waiting, “I just phoned the emergency line and they’ve put the time back to 2.30 this afternoon.” How bloody long did they need?

We rummaged in the eaves storage space for Dad’s camp kitchen and gas bottle, on which we made scrambled eggs on toast for brekkers and boiled up a huge kettle of water, we used some to make tea and the rest to fill our flasks. Unplugging the second lounge light we rigged up power to Dad’s TV equipment and started to watch LOTR The Return of the King. (We had already watched the Fellowship of the Ring on Monday and the Two Towers on Tuesday.) This actually took us to well after 12 noon.

I checked the emergency line again and the time for reconnection hadn’t altered at all, which was sort of hopeful. Our lunch was sausage and mash and beans (well, we were using a camp kitchen so it seemed appropriate). We sat in the lounge with our plates on our knees watching the special features disc to the RotK DVD when the lights came back on again! At bloody last!

Tidying away all the wires, camp kitchen and generator took us much less time than getting it all set up. The 2.30 time was beaten by almost an hour and a half. [As a post script to this, I got a phone call on Monday morning -29^th – from the company apologising for the outage and the time it took to restore the connection. The lady on the phone was so obsequious and conciliatory I hadn’t the heart to be rude to her. After all, as Loll said afterwards, it wasn’t her fault; she was just the voice on the phone trying to smooth things over!]

The rest of the day we spend just pottering about and generally being a pair of lazy cows who eat off their knees in front of the TV.  I was Tina, she was Cheryl and we were typists from Sunderland! The silliness we sometimes get up knows no bounds.

Sunday December 28^th

We had a morning of skyping across the globe. I called Australia and entertained everyone with our blackout tales. Dad was concerned I hadn’t damaged his precious generator. I teased him about his precious [well, we had been watching LotR hadn’t we? Louisa was still fine and in the pink. The kids were gobsmacked at having a pregnant woman in their midst, the girls were just toddlers when Suze was pregnant so they have vague memories of what it is like.

Mum was chipper and a happy little soul. She loved her pressie and was surprised when I told her I had bought the pattern to make a lot more (I’d got a multi-pocketed fabric bag, she has masses of these crammed with her gubbins) of different sizes and shapes and capacities. She though the power cut was appalling, that we had been off for so long.

Gran was her usual mock-grumpy self [it’s all an act]. She is looking forward to Mum’s visit for New Year’s Eve and then the trip to stay with us too. It’s been really rainy in Hawick and she had a good old moan about the Scottish weather.

Kaybers was up to her eyes in chaos as they had decided to reorganise their bedroom and move things around. I was thinking, Why do it at this time of year? It transpires they’d had a big argument about where the cot for the baby should go and Kaybers wanted to re-position the bed so there was more room at her side for the cot.

For everyone else I just e-mailed a generic post Christmas epistle, altered slightly for personalisation purposes. I was surprised to get several replies within the hour!

As the weather was a bit grotty, we took the woofies up to Silloth, to stroll along the prom. Parking at the Skinburness end and walking into town (where we munched through the obligatory bag of chips, up in the pagoda) and then back up to the car. This is a wonderful stroll and is about two miles long. As a bonus, Criffel decided to put in an appearance, across the Solway Firth. There is a saying along the west coast of Cumbria; “If you can see Criffel it’s going to rain: if you can’t it is raining!” Luckily it didn’t rain on us at all.

We had our evening meal with Molly, Eric and Stephen and fielded questions about my immediate family. They don’t remember ever meeting my Scottish Gran, so I invited them round to have a meal with us all, when she and Mum arrived. I am sure they must have met her some time, surely. Probably before I arrived on the scene.

After dinner we had a surprise visit from Avril and Andy. Avril is one of Loll’s sisters and she is almost exactly the same age as me, I am a Pisces and she is an Aries. If I hadn’t been so keen to arrive in the world I would have been an Aries too! They are thinking of buying a house in Silloth! They had been there this afternoon. When Laura said that we had too, Avril said that she knew, or thought she knew, because she thought she saw us, surrounded by a pack of dogs, walking along the prom towards Skinburness, as they were driving back down the Skinburness Road, going in the other direction. They had been to look at a house just past where we had parked up, on the main road, looking out over the Solway. Apparently it was a bit of a mess inside, though.

The arrival of A & A meant we stayed much longer than we had meant to, and the dogs final walk didn’t start until just before midnight. Still, the evening was very enjoyable. I don’t get to see Laura’s sisters that often and they are great company.