We managed to get the train from Preston to Ambleside in the Lake District. The plan was to spend the next three days here in the country allowing Ryan to do some more study and also taking advantage of the hills for hiking.

Ambleside is a really nice town, it is not as tourist like as the other towns nearby and is within hiking and walking distance to the lakes and hills. We did a bit of a walk around on our first day there just to check the place out, had a few drinks to.

The Creek through Ambleside

We were super luck that on the Saturday the weather was amazing and we set out to hike. We started at the information center but decided that we didn’t need a map. I don’t count this as a mistake but a map probably would have resolved some hardship later on in the hike. Anyway we set off towards the fell (it is between a mountain and a hill) that we could see from our room the night before.

“The Target”

So we made a few wrong turns getting out of town but ended up going across a soccer field and along a river. We ran into some people who said the only bridge was on private property so we took off the shoes and crossed the river, it was only shallow and we dominated it.

down the river

We then got out of the river and started up the fell, this is where we learnt our first lesson on “Hiking in the English Hills”, If you see a large clump of trees, don’t head into it. As we found out the reason there is a large clump of trees and everywhere around it is farm land and developed by farmers is because below the trees there is not very faviourable terrain. We quickly hit 90% inclines and found ourselves climbing instead of hiking. This was silly, but we continued up the fell. The ground was loose as well which made it interesting to say the least. We both made it to the top but don’t think we will be going rock climbing anytime soon.

This picture does not do the slope justice, Ryan has some on his camera so i will upload those.

Once we made it to the top it was amazing, the view was great largely due to the weather. I will let the pictures do the talking on this one.

at the top

The view from the top

Ambleside

After sitting down and having an apple we headed towards the lake as it was swim time. Where we came out at the river it was to deep and we needed to cross, so some people passing by in a canoe gave us a lift across the river, it was nice of them.

yay we made it

We then went to the water, Ryan went for a swim but I decided to skip it. We decided at this point that we would go to one of the local pubs for some Ales. The next morning it was harder to get out of bed.

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