After we finished Sunday’s challenging hike, the hotel said, “Ah, tomorrow will be much easier.” Hmm, we didn’t necessarily find that to be the case. Monday was indeed only 8.5 miles and about 1800’ of elevation gain. But it seemed to take forever. Maybe it was because it was our fourth day in a row of hiking. Maybe it was because it was a much warmer day and the sun was directly on us. Maybe it was the rocky path and the section that we had to do using our hands and feet. Whatever it was, we were certainly glad when we completed our journey and rolled into beautiful little Grasmere.

Today’s miles: 8.91. Total miles completed: 39.05. Remaining miles to go: 150.95

And the best news of all, we get an extra rest day in Grasmere. Hurrah!

We saw a lot of our new trail friends on Monday. I earlier mentioned Bob and Angie and their dog Cocoa, our trail friends from Northern Ireland. We saw quite a bit of them on the trail today. They were kind and shared some wonderful pictures of Cocoa. Bob and Angie are so much fun! And Cocoa too!

Cocoa really does LOVE the water!

Here is my “sheep of the day” picture. These cute guys were posing in this pretty little glen just waiting for tourists to take pictures. These are Herdwick sheep and are naturally suited to life in the Lakeland fells. They are born fully black and then begin to get white tips to their wool as they get older. You can see the color changing in the young lamb in the picture. By one year old, they are chocolate brown with white faces and feet and are called “hoggs”. By their second birthday their fleece is gray and they are called “twinters”, meaning, of course, two winters. As the females mature they are called ewes and the males tups.

Okay, time to start up the hill. This is the valley we will be climbing. The valley is called Greenup Gill, “gill” meaning valley.

Oh, it’s getting rocky and steep now. The top is called Greenup Edge and that is where we are heading.

Higher and higher we go. The path goes up around the left side of that little peak. You can’t even see the path in the picture and it is the part where we were essentially scrambling on all fours.

We made it to the top!! And it looks like we are on top of the world again. Big smiles all around. We cross the saddle up on top and then head down the other side.

There were some pretty bits on the way down.

As we neared Grasmere we begin to see charming English country houses.

We made it, whew. Here is our cute Guest House in Grasmere. We had the next day, Tuesday, as a rest day so I am going to include some pictures from Grasmere here as well.

Grasmere was where the poet William Wordsworth lived and is buried. There is a wonderful museum dedicated to him. This is the Wordsworth Hotel.

It used to be that when you would travel in England, you would see red telephone booths all over. The booths are still there, but not the telephones. They’ve been replaced with defibrillators. They’re everywhere. Probably a good thing.

Grasmere is famous for gingerbread. We bought some but haven’t tried it yet. Will report on that tomorrow. But the costumed lady selling the gingerbread was pretty cute.

Beautiful leaves of many colors.

It was a wonderful day off. Very restful. Wednesday we hit the trail again for another big climb. Eight or nine miles into Patterdale. We will get to see our first “tarn”. You can look forward to hearing about that in the next blog.

Thanks for traveling with us.

God bless,

Coe