The Lakes

This article was written 16 years ago in 2007 when I was 22, so I ask you not to judge the writing too harshly! The text is as it was originally published.

On Thursday morning I made my way to Lichfield to meet up with Deako and started on our way up to the Lake District. My first venture up there in four or so years (since the days of Duke of Edinburgh walks), this was a photography trip. I haven’t had a proper break since mid May so it was a chance to grab a few days of semi-rest too.

We covered a lot of distance in the three days we were there, picking up a good number of shots (which I’ve yet to Flickrise). On the first night we spent time over at Rydal Water, Grasmere and then Langdale where we ate at The Sticklebarn (a place I stayed during the residential part of the aforementioned DofE award).

The roads are hilly and the weather cold at times, but really we couldn’t complain – it was decent walking weather and the light seemed to hold. We didn’t even get rained on. On the second day we went out on the Kirkdale pass to the coast over the mountains out to Wast Water then onto Scafell Pike and walked the nearby Great Gable.

While we were at the top of this last mountain we were overflown by what looked like four Spitfires/Hurricanes at about 60ft, but I’m now fairly convinced these were just training planes. Still, we didn’t get our cameras out in time, but I did managed to catch one good shot of one of them heading out of the other end of the valley.

On the Saturday (and after a better night’s sleep for the lack of snoring we had had to endure on the Thursday night in the hostel) we went out to Derwent Water, Keswick, Thurlmere, Buttermere, Borrowdale and Ullswater, doing a couple of shorter walks up near Honiston Pass.

Deako shoots a EOS 10D which is a couple of levels up from the 350D I use, and it was good to compare the results. I probably will upgrade the camera body at some point (even though I’ve been very pleased with it so far), but as things only get exponentially more expensive from this point on, it probably won’t be that soon.

We got back down to the Midlands on Sunday morning and only in a couple of hours (which is pretty good going) and despite a late night in Penrith with Bev (a friend of James’) and her fiance, Kev. I have to say I was more than impressed with Penrith (considering it isn’t really somewhere I would have considered going out), but it wasn’t bad at all.

So after all that I have a large stack of images to sift through, tag and upload, not to mention responding to the backlog of voicemails that are filling up my phone.

This post was first published on Mon Oct 01 2007

The author

My name is Andy Higgs and I am a founder, product management & design leader, occassional surfer and travel enthusiast based in the UK.

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