Day 4 - June 6th

It was a tough day. It started with a beautiful walk around a lake named Ennerdale Water. Naming terminology is often a mystery to me. In the Northeast US, lakes are often called ponds. To my understanding, ponds are smaller bodies of water, not larger ones, and why would the English call a large body of water "water"—of course, it is water! Regardless, it was beautiful, and the walking quite pleasant.

After 10 miles, we had lunch at a youth hostel called the Black Sail, in a large verdant valley that appeared to be a dead end with steep walls called the Haystacks. The Black Sail has quite a history; it started as a shepherd's hut and was converted to a youth hostel in 1933. Now, back to those steep walls. As we ate lunch, it began to dawn on me that there was no apparent path out of the valley. It turned out there was a path; it ran straight up the wall of one the Haystacks alongside a creek. The climb was maybe one of the steepest climbs in my memory, but in the end, the descent was more difficult — rocky, very rocky! It was all round loose rocks that required careful footfall to prevent falling or twisting your ankle. Oh, and there were boggy areas periodically to add some variety and difficulty! It was a long and difficult decent that punished my old knees.

We survived the 15 miles, the climb and descent and ended up at the nicest hotel of the trip so far. We then had a wonderful three-course meal.

The opportunity for image making was largely limited to landscapes and vistas — not my thing, but I did my best.

Here is the link to the photographs, sorry, but you will need to copy the link and paste it in your browser address bar. And, you will need to scroll down to view the images - damn Squarespace iPad version, practically useless!

https://www.reedpikephotography.com/coast-to-coast-photos/images-day-4