We’re ready to leave at 8, but the car keys are gone. We look litteraly everywhere, and our small caravan suddenly feels like a never ending maze. We check all the kitchen cabinets, all cabinets in general, we dismantle the sofa, check yesterday’s laundrey bag, and Olga’s laptop cover. Bingo! Zeno proudly says that he put them there.
We leave for an hour drive through the stunning mountains of the lake district to hike to Aira Force. It’s a grey, humid day. It somehow suits the views on the lakes.
We hope the car park is not too crowded when we arrive 30 minutes later than scheduled. Luckily there is enough space and we start our climb to the first waterfall. Tim asks Olga to put away some photo gear so he can take better pictures. She puts it behind Tim on a wall (instead of on the floor), and continues the climb with Cleo.
It are steep steps but Cleo goes up fast just like a climbing goat, which becomes her hiking nick name. Zeno sits in the Deuter just like a DeuterPeuter. When Tim joins the team again on the top, he asks his photo gear back. Olga realises it’s still down at the bottom of the waterfall, and runs back down to get it, and back up. What a fit woman!
We continue to meander alongside the stream to the second waterfall, with short stops to take a picture, play with the water, and jump back to the trail.
We cross the bridge after the third water fall to hike back down. Some people continue the hike to Gowbarrow Fell, but we try to stick to ca. 5km hikes that Cleo can do easily.
We play the game who is first at the next tree. And the next tree is always the next tree, the children run down in high speed. A game that will go wrong at the uneven path. And it does. Cleo hits the floor head first and is bruised on her nose, knees and fore head.
We want to recover at the cafe, but it’s closed. Olga hunts some juice, tea and toast at a food kiosk some minutes walk from the parking. The food does the trick and Cleo seems ready for another very short walk to the nearby lake Ullswater, our first real lake of the Lake district. Here we continue our practice in tossing jumping stones on the lake. Our record is 4, but an English family joins us and they can easily jump 5-6 times. Meanwhile Tim takes some photos.
When we return to the parking, it’s full, with cars circling, looking for cars leaving. We make someone happy and head up the mountains to Keswick, the heart of the Lake District. We can’t see the town through all the cars, it’s packed to the brim with tourist. Luckily we find an empty space at the big parking lot next to the lake just outside the town. We walk along the lake with hordes of other tourists, not quite peaceful but beautiful anyways.
As a total of three hours hiking is enough for the kids, we drive back North to our caravan. We play some football before we have dinner and call it a day.
