I have one last summer 2016 adventure to share before I start
blogging in real-time again. Truth is, I’ve been holding off on this post
because I’m not entirely sure how to put my experience into words.
Sometimes, it’s hard to be completely honest with my feelings when sharing my
stories on the blog. There’s some unspoken blogging rule that when talking
about travel adventures everything must be rainbows and unicorns and when it
doesn’t work out as planned, you gloss over the dirty details. Well, I’m
going to break that stigma now and share with you one of the worst holidays
I’ve ever taken.
Between my trip to Canada and Portugal, I spent 5 days hiking in
the Lake District-- a rather large National Park north of Manchester in the
UK. It had never really been on my list of places to go until Jasper had
shared some of his pictures with me. The landscape was absolutely
stunning! In addition, it seemed like such a great place to hike. There
are small villages scattered throughout the park that you can easily walk from
place to place within a day. Added bonus are all the pubs! There was no
need to carry any food which was a very attractive idea. I didn’t think
this trip would be something I did right away until I got chatting with a
friend who lives in the UK. She was itching to experience some hiking and
thought the Lake District was a wonderful adventure we could go on
together. Before we knew it, flights/trains were booked and we were set
to hike together for a few days. Unfortunately, Natalie couldn’t get the
extra time off work, so she was only joining for the weekend and I was going to
be alone for the remainder of the trip. I was looking forward to
experiencing solo travel and was super excited to experience the beauty of the Lake
District.
Life threw me my first
lemon the second we entered the National Park. You see, I knew we’d be out in the
boonies but I expected the little towns in between to be more like functioning
little towns instead of two or three houses. Essentially this translated into
nonexistent cellphone reception which normally is no bother for me. I’m usually
the person who forgets their phone everywhere because I just don’t care. Except
this time. Being that Natalie and I didn’t have a solid itinerary beforehand
and the fact that I was hiking alone after Natalie left, I had promised to keep
Sander super up-to-date with what was going on. Kinda hard when reception is
ridiculous and stressful when you’re receiving his somewhat panicked “I haven’t
heard from you at all, are you okay?” messages without being able to respond to
them!
I pushed it out of my mind
for the night and woke up ready to hike the next day. That is until I read his
other messages wondering if everything was okay. I was hoping to send a
message sometime that day, but that chance never came. I was absolutely
obsessed with finding reception all day long but had absolutely no luck.
I was feeling quite anxious about it and in the end it sort of tainted my
enjoyment of hiking for the day because I could not just push it out of my mind.
That aside though, our
first day of hiking was epic. And overly ambitious. Initially we planned on
doing these hikes over two days, but we (maybe just me?) didn’t want to hike
with our backpacks. After trekking through the Rockies with it, I was so over
the whole point-to-point aspect of hiking. Sander and I did 25km with 30+lbs on
our backs, so I figured 30ish kilometers would be fine with just day packs. I
mean, people run 42km all at once, right? Well, turns out we weren’t quite cut
out for it.
I was pretty much done at
the half way point, and we hadn’t even covered the hard part yet. Don’t get me
wrong, it was beautiful and I loved it, but I was tired (not to mentioned
jetlagged because this was the day after I had flown back to Europe) and we
still had two steep ascents left. Apparently jetlag and hiking aren’t a good
mix. Lesson learned. We meandered through Wasdale Head, grabbed an amazing
cappuccino, and hit the trail again. In the wrong direction. I have a few major
complaints about the Lake District and their ridiculous trails is one of them.
NONE of them are marked. There is no sign at the trail head saying “Black Sail
Pass this way” or anything of the sort. Luckily I had a trail map and I’m
pretty alright at reading them (if I'm paying attention), but the lack of
signage was annoying. And tiring. One time, we had hiked over 2km in
before I realized that the river was on our right and it should be on our left.
We tried fording it, but it was just too wide and deep. We couldn’t find a good
access point, so we ended up turning around and going back. So that added extra
time and took extra energy. Annoying, but not a big deal, we still had plenty
of daylight left. My only concern was getting a message to Sander asap and it
appeared that I was out of luck anyway.
So, on we went. We totally
owned the crazy ascent and grabbed an energy bar to celebrate. We were ready to
head on when we had realized the trail was not visible. We got to the top and
it just disappeared. No sign, no markers, no nothing. We tried going this way,
that way, this way again, and then eventually using the map and geography
around us, we decided that we needed to go straight ahead.....down a massive
massive descent....where there was no trail at all. But we knew we needed to go
that way! So we took the chance. When we rounded the corner and saw the Black
Sail Hut, I was so relieved. That’s the second time in my life that I was
beyond relieved the see a hut. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere, unsure
whether you’re walking the right way and knowing that you absolutely cannot
turn back because it’s too far is not a cool feeling.
Anyway, we finally made it
to the main road and there was a little food cart at the bottom. We got some
juice and rested for a moment while chatting with some locals. I was on a hunt
for wifi or reception and I was asking locals what my best bet was. Apparently
I had no chance, which just made my heart sink even further. They couldn’t
believe we were planning on walking to Seatoller, but we had missed the bus and
had no other option. The lady insisted that we were insane and suggested trying
to lift a ride along the way. She said it was a steep and long walk back to
camp. We walked for about 5 minutes before I saw a warning sign mentioning that
the road is only suitable for vehicles that can handle 25% grade. TWENTY FIVE
PERCENT. That’s steep in case you didn’t know. After seeing that, feeling our
fatigue and me freaking out more about messaging Sander, we decided to
hitchhike. We let the first vehicle pass because we were too chicken to do it,
but vowed that the next one we would stick out our thumbs. We heard the vehicle
coming up behind us, threw out our thumbs and guess who pulled up beside us and
yelled hop in? The lady we were talking with earlier! She said she just
couldn’t go home knowing we were out there walking 10 more kilometers. We were
forever grateful for her generosity. It really did save us some time and some
energy of what energy we actually had left.
She dropped us off at our
camp and we continued walking straight to the pub to grab some dinner and
hopefully some reception or wifi for me. As we were walking there, I got “It
has been over 24 hours and I still haven’t heard anything from you. Are you
okay? Please message me” from Sander. Well, that was just the end of it for me.
I was on the verge of a breakdown. I made it my mission to find wifi even if I
had to pay. We went into the hotel next to the pub and I explained myself and
asked if I could have the wifi password. No. Not even if I paid for it. At that
point, I was just standing there trying to think of another option and then all
of a sudden the lady said “Borrowdale. All upper case. And don’t come back here
tomorrow because I will get in trouble”. At that point, I just burst into tears
and thanked her. After messaging Sander and letting him know that I was
alive and that reception was awful we headed to the pub for a well-earned
burger and pint of beer. We had an awesome visit, made a plan for the
next day and hit the hay early.
The next day, the weather
took a turn for the worse. Like much, much, much worse. We packed up our tent
in the rain and made our way to Rydal Water. We set up our tent, in the rain of
course, had lunch and packed our day packs. The weather sucked, but we weren’t
going to let it get us down. We were hiking Helvellyn– one of the highest peaks
in England with a pretty stellar view.
Right when we got to the
trailhead, the rain let up and the sun came out! It was gorgeous. We did a
super duper happy dance and marched uphill. And then it started
drizzling. And then it started pouring. And then it got super windy. And
then it started raining even harder. FYI, wind + rain = soaked to the bone.
What kept me going was the view at the end. I was so excited to enjoy
this view:
But instead, this is what we saw:
It was such a huge
disappointment. But we did it. We persevered and I was proud of us for it. It
wasn’t the easiest climb, nor the easiest descent. It was so cold, so windy and
so rainy. We were both soaked and just wanted to be warm again. Little did
we know that the most challenging part of the hike was still ahead of us.
By the time we got down, it
was POURING. I know I’ve been saying it was pouring the whole time, but this
time it was absolutely dumping buckets on our heads. We were seriously soaked
all the way through. We went to the bus stop to wait when we decided to check
how long we had still. According to the booklet we had, we knew that the last
bus was at 19:45 up the road from us. We checked the times on the post at the
stop, and it said the last bus was at 17:50. I looked at my watch, 18:21. My
heart sank. How can the booklet be wrong!?! I figured it had to be old schedule
posted at the bus stop. So I checked the fine print: “Updated 04/07/2016”. And my
heart sunk even further. I refused to believe it. There was no way we were
stuck out there. But the reality was sinking in. We were stuck. We were about
25km away from our campsite. It was pouring rain. We were both shivering. There
was no reception. No pay phone. There was no footpath or even a shoulder on the
side of the road to walk on. It was only an afternoon hike so we had no extra
food. No lights. Nothing. As this sunk in, I still refused to believe there was
no bus coming. How could the booklet be wrong!? We weren’t stupid hikers. We
had checked the last bus times to make sure this wasn’t going to happen. We had
a turnaround time that we were well ahead of. Yet, there we stood, water
gathering in our boots, freaking out. Pretty sure at some point, I started
yelling out of frustration. It was like everything that could have gone wrong
went wrong. And with our luck, we’d end up hitchhiking with a serial killer and
dying on this trip.
At this point, it was 18:45
and according to the booklet, there was a bus stopping up the road at that
time. I proposed waiting until 19:00 before officially freaking out and giving
up on the idea of there being a bus. In the meantime, we were trying to hitch a
ride with someone. We didn’t really care how we got to our campsite, we just
needed to get there or at least to the closest town where we could call for a
taxi or something. It was getting late and there weren’t going to be many cars
passing for much longer. Not to mention it was getting dark and we had no
lights. Walking on the side of a windy, narrow road with no shoulder at night
with no lights sounds like the second way we could have died on this trip.
A bunch of cars passed, and
no one would stop for us. I was beginning to get really really really worried.
My heart was in my throat and every bad thing that could happen was going
through my head. And then we heard another vehicle coming. A big one. A
truck maybe? Or a bus? I just remember chanting “please be a bus, please be a
bus, please be a bus, please be a bus” over and over. When it came up the hill and
we saw the glowing 555 along the top, we both cheered and began waving our arms
in the air while laughing giddily. It was one of those moments where you either
laughed or cried, and apparently we decided to laugh. We were so incredibly
relieved that we weren’t stranded!
Eventually we got to our
campsite, grabbed our stuff and took a nice long hot shower. This was followed
by a traditional English roast dinner in the pub and the most amazing sleep
ever.
The next day, I woke up and
was immediately greeted by the pounding rain on our tent. It had not let up. At
all.
After waiting and waiting
to see if it would ease, we decided to just get on with the day. I decided to
stay at that campground after Natalie was gone. There were hot showers, a nice
pub with free wifi and that way I didn’t have to pack up my tent in the rain.
Win, win, win as far as I was concerned. Our plan was to walk to the next town
where Natalie would catch her bus to the train to go home. Within 3 minutes, we
were both soaked. It was pouring rain so hard. Natalie decided to take the bus
all the way instead, and I headed to the pub for a coffee and some wifi to see
if the weather was supposed to get better. It wasn’t.
I was so over the whole
trip. I just wanted to go home. My hiking boots were giant puddles, all my
hiking clothes were soaked, everything else was damp, I was afraid to take the
bus anywhere because who knows if it’s actually going to show up and the
trails, well, if they’re actually marked, good luck navigating them.
I was not having fun. Not
in the slightest bit.
I was whatsapping Sander
when he suggested I come home early. I looked up the cost to change my flight
and decided to go for it. I was one more bad experience away from having a
total meltdown. What’s the point in traveling if you just aren’t having fun?
I’m usually able to see the good things in a bad situation, but this time, I
just couldn’t keep myself afloat with happy thoughts. I rebooked and was
very excited to be heading home early. I hid in my tent for the rest of the day
drinking the delicious beers Natalie brought for me, reading my book, listening
to pod casts and napping. Around 6pm the rain finally eased to a drizzle and I
went out for a short walk. The sun actually came out for a bit and it was
gorgeous. Combined with knowing I was heading home the next day, it totally
lifted my spirits.
I woke up the next morning
to more rain. Packed up my stuff (and nearly 2kg of water) and got out of there.
All in all, the Lake
District was probably one of the worst holidays I’ve ever gone on. Some of it
was my own fault, but most of it was out of my control and apparently I just
couldn’t cope this time around. I don’t regret the trip by any means but
I also don’t regret going home early. Sometimes you just have to admit to
yourself that enough is enough and take the experience as a life lesson.
In hindsight it wasn't all that bad and I can now laugh at myself for
being such a wuss.
