Day 9: Hiking around Keswick

After going to bed early yesterday, I got up early and hanged around and pack for a little hike before heading down to breakfast. Once breakfast was done, I headed toward the Centre if town to the TI. I bought a hiking trail map to the Catbells and a ticket for a full loop trip (on the Keswick Launch) around Derwentwater Lake with hop on and off privileges. I then slowly made my way to the lake. The Keswick Launch runs every half an hour with one boat going clockwise on the hour and another boat going anticlockwise on the 30s. The loop around the lake lasts 50 minutes.

I needed to go anticlockwise so I had to wait. It seems a lot of people were going to hike the Catbells and Newlands. I just followed the people up the path. The path indeed, as written, was strenuous with lots of steep climbs. There seem to be three plateaus of Catbells. I didn't know this until I started hiking it. I thought I made good time and the top, but only to realize that there was another peak. As I made my way to the second peak, it started raining and the wind was blowing quite hard. Once I was at the top of the second peak, there was another steeper peak. At the time I was drenched (and not obviously prepared as everyone else on the hike) so I decided to somehow make my way down. Now, going down is the hard part. I found a trail that lead straight down. It was very steep. As I climbed or slid my way down, I literally landed on my butt twice since the trail was all muddy, too. My jeans were all muddy after this hike. Eventually and slowly, I made my way down to the waters to catch a boat back to Keswick. So, my hiking expedition took about three hours. If the weather was nicer, I probably take my time getting to the top plateau before ascending.

Once I made my way back into town, I was very hungry. Since the first time I got here, I had fish and chips. Yay! The fish was good (not fishy at all) and it was a really big piece as well. There were a lot of chips also. I didn't finish those. There were a lot of people walking around town but not as many as yesterday. There were also a lot of dogs everywhere. This town is like one big dog park, but the dogs were on leashes.

After lunch, which was about 14:00, I made my way back to the b&b to try to clean my jeans (as you might remember, I did laundry yesterday). I was apparently walking around town with a muddy bottom. It took a while to clean my jeans and somehow hang them to dry. I hope they dry before tomorrow morning.

After changing, I walked around town some more exploring this tiny place. I didn't go to the Pencil Museum. I'm not even sure it was open. Since it was early and the walk was quicker than I thought, I just took a nap at the b&b. After my nap, i hanged out reading and waiting for the rain to stop. It was raining pretty hard. After the rain let up alittle, I went to find dinner. Lots of the restaurants are opened for dinner even though it was Easter Sunday. I went into this restaurant called '17Again'. It was a shop and a restaurant from what it looks like. It's a girly shop with only about 10 tables. The shop/restaurant was very cramped. When I went in, there were only a few patrons but when I left it was full and people were turned away. I had a two course meal with soup and steak. The meal was pretty good but my steak was tough. The sad part was in didn't bring my camera with me so no picture of that nice meal.

It's downtime again (now I'm use to relaxing and just hanging). Just when I'm use to my schedule, I'm going to be joining a tour group tomorrow. All well, another new experience.

Tomorrow's agenda: Heading to Edinburgh to join a Contiki tour group.