Friday December 26th – 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 27th 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 -29th – 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 28th
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.
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