Day 4

Day 4:  Grasmere to Glenridding.  About 14 km, 865m up, 785m down.

What a lucky girl am I!  Another tremendous day of "walking".  We've certainly come to understand that the term "walking" is a very civilized and understated description of the hiking in these parts.  It has also become clearer to me why the Brits have such a rich mountaineering pedigree; they've cut their climbing teeth on some of these same peaks that we've been among for the last 4 days.  Once we got back to the C2C path from our little detour to the village of Grasmere, we started climbing right away.  The grade was gentle, though, and the hour-long climb was quite pleasant and in fact perhaps a little too warm.  The sun was out, and the views were great.  As we climbed higher, though, the wind picked up and by the time we reached the top of Grisedale Pass, we tucked behind a stone wall to bundle up and have a quick snack.  As an aside - I can't believe just how high up some of these hills they have built these incredible stone walls!  We enjoyed a great view down to Grisdale Tarn.  It must have been windy; the tarn (small lake) had whitecaps on it!  From here we had a choice of three routes - Helvellyn, the St. Sunday Crag route or the Grisdale Valley route.  Being Sunday (and the fact that the Helvellyn route had some exposure and would probably have been more dangerous in these high winds), we decided on the St. Sunday Crag route.  We sure weren't disappointed!  We climbed to our highest point (The Cape) on the route (841m) and enjoyed a pleasurable ridge walk for a bit.  Great views all around.  Still in search of a lunch spot out of the wind, we descended (steeply at times) down toward Ullswater and the towns of Glenridding and Patterdale.  We finally found a sheltered spot among the sheep about half-way down and enjoyed a wonderful view of the lands & lakes below.  A final descent down to Glenridding, an ice cream by the lake, a trip to the wine & beer store, a shower and happy hour at the B&B, a scrumptious dinner at a nearby restaurant, a stroll down to the lake, a bit of research on tomorrow's route, a bit of blogging and time for lights out.  And that's why I'm a lucky girl!