North Lakes June 2009
From ICCC
People
- Alistair "The destroyed" Cott
- Mark "driving confidence" Flower
- Nina "Not a medic" Brixey
- Rachel "Arse Dam" Fox
- Rory "flat battery" Fyffe
- Amie "bigger balls than the boys" Young
- Tim "guess how much rent I pay" Burne
- Alexa "orange ankles" Batten
- Joe "Turbo shandy"
- Chris "appropriate footwear" Hampshire
- Ant "Only a little chunder" Farrington
- Cam "The destroyer" The Dog
Trip Report
The trip started with a biblical amount of faffing. As the Spark Bridge hut wasn’t available, Tim's new place in the north lakes was the destination. After finally getting clear of the M25 by 8.30pm, Rory's phone (containing the e-mail with the directions on it) died. Undeterred, it was decided to drive to Spark Bridge, and wing it from there.
Bad plan.
A long while later the bus arrived in the general vicinity of Tim’s place. With no idea of its exact location some bright spark came up with the idea of blindly driving around and hoping to spot boats on a car roof. Very shortly afterwards it was realised that this was daft and the backup plan of waking up a sleeping Tim with a phonecall was put into effect. Ten minutes and no beers later everyone was kicking out Zzzzz’s at various places around the house.
A relaxed morning saw us waking to dense fog and drizzle. Bah. So much for a nice sunny pootle on the sea. A civilised breakfast of cereals, toast and much tea allowed for us to put off leaving the house for as long as possible. Getting to the beach at St Bees we were all surprised that there was actually some surf, and the weather was clearing nicely. After twenty minutes catching some waves we re-grouped for a pootle round the headland to Fleswick beach where we’d planned to meet Nina who would walk along the cliffs with Cam (Amie’s parents dog).
Despite the short distance, it was surprisingly hard work in our river boats and we were all relieved to brave the dumping surf and get back onto dry land. Chris took a dip as he was surfing in to the beach and swam his boat to shore through the rocks. Ant stayed out to catch a few waves in his playboat and got caught in the dumping surf, much to the amusement of everyone else who was on the beach by this point.
The suspicious plan of not buying a fry-up came into it’s own at this point, as the money saved had been used to purchase two disposable BBQ’s and some lunch, which had all been packed into boats for a remote-beach-BBQ. Thus ensued what was possibly IC’s most gourmet feed ever – salmon fillets cooked in lemon juice, posh (i.e. not Tesco value) bread, bagged salad… all obviously washed down with a few tinnies (I hope you were bloody grateful as a crate of beer in the back of my boat made the paddle over damn hard work).
Once we’d eaten, Cam became the centre of attention and his rock climbing skills, judgment of breaking waves and fetching skills were put to the test. Just before getting back on for the paddle back, Alistair decided to throw the stick one last time. Unfortunately the end of the stick that he grabbed happened to have a nail sticking out of it, which made a nice long cut all the way up his thumb. Nina, having only an hour previously foolishly uttered the words “If any of you injure yourselves, I’m not patching you back up. This is my weekend off” was then called in to put her bandaging skills to the test.
A rapid reshuffle of boats later and Alistair was walking back along the cliffs with Nina, whilst Tim paddled the Duo back single-handedly, with the rubbish bags as his passenger.
Back at St Bees, radioactive looking icecreams and frisbee were the order of the day whilst Amie took Ally and dropped him at A&E to have his hand stitched up.
Back at Tim’s place, Mark took charge of the BBQ and was soon flipping burgers like a lifetime McDonalds employee whilst everyone else had showers and consumed chilled alcoholic beverages in the conservatory. Fortunately, some of us had our phones on and so a patched up Ally was collected from what was worked out to be his 5th ICCC related hospital visit in as many years.
It was decided that the Carling in the beer bucket was mingingly undrinkable, so a half-yard glass was used and abused to get rid of the stuff. All the guys took part, with Ant getting the record at a lightening 22 seconds but risking disqualification with a chunder soon after, which he claimed didn’t count as it was only a little one. From this point on things generally deteriorated, with shots of a Dutch spirit being passed around and Joe going for a second half-yard with a turbo-shandy. It all culminated in a kayak porn drinking game being devised, whereby each participant was given a boat colour, and had to drink each time said colour appeared on screen, with everyone drinking when someone rolled. Although great, the game still do with a few refinements to turn it into a true masterpiece. Either way, the Carling was finished and we all went to bed happy.
Another relaxed morning followed and with the bright sunshine it was decided to head on up to the Eskdale waterfalls for a spot of gorge walking (Incidentally, if you’re interested in seeing these being paddled, look here)
Despite a few funny looks on the 3km walk-in we all got to the start and jumped in the water. The highlight was probably Rachel’s discovery that if she sat at the top of one of the falls, she could effectively dam the channel, allowing someone to get half-way up the fall before she stood up and washed them back down into the pool. Genius. After a few jumps off the biggest cliff on the river (about 10m) and some fine chin-scratching from others, we had a late lunch and headed back to the cars.
Being so far up Esk valley, Mark opted for the most direct route back to London, which happened to be over Hardknott pass – reputedly the steepest road in the country. Still, the bus made it over much to the relief of Amie (whose dad is in the mountain rescue team which covers the area, and occasionally gets called out to rescue “idiots on Hardknott”). Unfortunately Mark had an Epic fail when he got to the other side of the pass, turned right instead of left and ended up going to the M6 via Broughton in Furness.
All-in-all a good surf trip to an area not world renowned (in-fact probably widely criticised) for it's surfing potential. Though I guess it was good because all the factors for a good surf trip were fulfilled: sun, lots of food, lots of beer.
