Weekend walking

I think we've managed to tire Oscar out completely this weekend! We decided that we'd have a night away on Saturday night. I'd been helping out at my friends all day while DH packed the van. Rather than try and find a room in a hotel, we opted to go back to what is becoming our regular pub/hotel, and stay in the van in the carpark, using the electric available to make sure we could have a bit of heat in the van overnight. DH booked a table for 8pm for us, and off we went.

It was a lovely night, and both of us slept really well in the van - even Oscar had a lie-in! The day started off a bit misty, but by the time we parked up next to Wet Sleddale reservoir to make breakfast, the sun was shining and the mist was clearing - perfect.

We left the van at 11 am and very quickly decided that we didn't need coats or even fleeces on as the sun was so warm. We've done part of the walk before, about 6 months ago when we had Molly with us. This time we just kept walking. And what fantastic views we had!

Eventually we stopped for lunch next to a stream, after squelching over mud, streams, up and down boggy ground, so it was quite a relief to sit down next to a lovely stream and have lunch.

By this time it was about 2pm - we'd gone too far to just turn round and go back (and would have involved climbing up quite a steep and muddy hill) so we carried on to what we thought would be a straight forward route back to the van.

Did I say straight forward? I don't think so! We don't even know what happened to the path! We followed what we thought looked like a path, but very soon become clear that we weren't going in the direction we needed to be heading if we were to get back to the van any time soon. So we trudged across what felt like miles of boggy moorland. The views were fabulous, but not quite knowing where we were, and finding it quite hard going across the very wet moorland, made it quite a difficult last part of the walk. Poor Oscar kept trying to rest whenever we stopped to check the map and he looked quite put out when we carried on!

Eventually we could see the reservoir and we were back on familiar ground. Phew! And 7 hours after setting off we made it back to the van for a well earned cup of tea and piece of cake (yes, the Christmas cake is still going - just).

A fabulous walk. A very long walk. A walk which I am so glad we did even if we were both exhausted by the time we'd finished. DH mapped it when we got home and worked out we'd done about 11 miles - our longest of the year so far, and I think Oscar's longest walk ever. No wonder it took so long and Oscar was so tired!