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Whilst sitting in the breakfast room at the B&B in the morning I was incredibly lucky to see a red squirrel running about in their backyard. Red squirrels are a dying breed in England, they’re being overtaken by the grey squirrel. Over the last couple of days I’d even seen signs saying to call and report any sightings so they could monitor their numbers. The one I saw was tiny and very cute!

Red squirrel at Hazel Bank Country House, Borrowdale

Red squirrel at Hazel Bank Country House, Borrowdale

I was joined by Howard today, he came up to walk for 5 days with me through the lake district, worried that I would not survive on my own!

The forecast was for rain and it was certainly cooler than the previous days when we set off, but we were lucky not to encounter any rain all day and it actually turned into a scorcher in the afternoon. The track started out fairly easy following a stream with lots of waterfalls, then climbed up a mountain over wet rocks and once on top of the mountain we were in the bog! If there weren’t any stepping stones over the bog then running and jumping became the favoured method to get across them! There was quite a bit of squelching and without the GPS I would have been completely and utterly lost on top as the bogs do a great job of hiding any paths! The views from both sides of the mountain were simply spectacular.

There were no towns en route to Grasmere but we had brought a packed lunch from the B&B so we sat on a rock with a postcard view, took our shoes and socks off to let them air and ate our lunch – a sandwich, crisps and flapjack. We arrived into Grasmere around 3:30pm, checked into the YHA which looked like an ancient manor house down a very long drive; showered, washed our clothes (Howard thought he felt a ghost down in the boiler room) and then headed into the very quaint village to meet up with Dave for a pint of something local. I didn’t expect to see so many tourists considering I’ve been lucky to see one or two people all day on the trail, but being in the Lake District now and at such a quaint village, Grasmere was teeming with busloads of tourists. William Wordsworth was buried in the local church graveyard here and the shops were full of Beatrix Potter souvenirs. The three of us had a lovely dinner in a very nice pub and tasted most of the beers they had on tap.

A cute Herdwick (‘Herdie’) sheep

Grasmere YHA

More new beers!

Day 3, Borrowdale to Grasmere