Mahinda’s Little World

[This has stuck in my drafts pile for ages, so the timing’s a bit off — it was the weened of 28th April!] 

Last weekend had the potential to be great. Properly great.

I was going off to the Lake District for a weekend of relatively hardcore hiking, in the company of Ed, Joe and Caroline. It’s something of an annual thing, except that I’d only made it out to play once before.

It was also the final of the Cricket World Cup on the Saturday — the mighty Sri Lanka, ably led by Mahela, were to play Australia, and I’d made the schoolboy error of not being anywhere near Sky Sports for the big event.

So, these are what would have made the weekend absolutely great: 

• Getting up to the Lakes without a hitch
• Lovely warm weather
• Surviving the weekend unscathed
• Sri Lanka being crowned World Champions once more
• Not writing off my car on the way home 

You’d think that I’d manage at least two of those? Well, you’d be wrong  

It all started off with car trouble, as already documented — I eventually got to the campsite at 11.30pm on Friday evening, well after curfew. Oops. Fortunately, there was Joe’s Land Rover* to look out for, and I didn’t need to pitch a tent.

* A proper old Defender, white with rusty bits. 

Unfortunately, there were three loud drunk blokes in the next tent over who seemed to be playing strip poker at 2am…and taking photos of each others’ arses. One was, apparently, "fluffy".

It turned out that Caroline had gotten her dates mixed up, and completely forgotten about the weekend. Fortunately, she was staying with her boyfriend in Cockermouth, so could make it over for the Saturday.

We were staying at the National Trust campsite in Great Langdale. Very pretty, really, as you’d expect from a valley in the Lakes. The weather was absolutely stunning all weekend — sun, sun and more sun. Good thing I’d packed the holiday hat

Saturday AM

Up we woke, bright and breezy. I’m rubbish at sleeping in sleeping bags and/or tents, unfortunately, so I wasn’t exactly fully rested. Oh well. Bacon was consumed, and we waited for Caroline to turn up before heading onwards and upwards.

The plan was to scramble up Stickle Gill/Ghyll, up to Stickle Tarn, and take it from there.

So, we headed up the path in the bright morning sunshine, until we found a suitable point for getting into the stream itself and starting the scramble for real.

And therein lay the problem. From the side of the path, Ed leapt majestically on to a large flat rock. I followed suit…and landed really badly, right on my right heel. I’d not judged the rock correctly, thinking it was level whereas it actually sloped away from me.

The first bloody bit of the weekend proper, and I’d crippled myself. I couldn’t put any weight on that heel…well, at least not without a fair amount of pain.

We decided that I’d take the path up and see how I felt, while the others would continue the scramble — they’d wait for me just behind a buttress of rock and, if I wasn’t there 20 minutes or so after them, they’d assumed I’d headed back to the campsite.

I didn’t see them at all, so just continued to Stickle Tarn at the top (almost 500m up). I assumed they’d waited, not found me (I was taking it pretty slow), and continued. So I sat in the sunshine for a while, foot in the icy cold water…until I got a call from Caroline.

It turned out that they weren’t ahead of me after all — somehow, our paths had crossed without me seeing them. So, we all met up once more. I hobbled around a bit, and decided that I’d head back down while they continued on for a bit of harder scrambling.

Dejected, I meandered back down the path, pausing to rest my aching foot and occasionally (okay, frequently) swearing copiously.

It just seemed such a shame.

Saturday PM

The others eventually returned to find me reading a book in the sunshine, and we headed off to the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel for beer and food. I put my SL cricket top on, and got asked by loads of people what the score was. "I don’t know" was my general response, given that there was no TV or internet coverage available to me…although a brief check on TMS in the Land Rover did reveal that play was held up due to rain.

The food at the pub was pretty good — nice and filling, and tasty too. Beer was also lovely, and the sun was still shining.

After food, we headed back to the campsite, and Caroline had to go back home. A very cute blonde in an early ’90s Porsche 911 (red) certainly draws many admiring glances!

We had a few beers, and ended up playing cards (mostly shithead) in the Landie, with the cricket on LW radio.

I’m not going to write much about the cricket, suffice to say that Sri Lanka got absolutely battered by a much better team on the day. It ended in absolutely farcical conditions, hopefully never to be seen again in such a major event.

This made me sad. More beer required.

Sunday

Get up, go home, not write off car. And that’s about it. My heel really hurt.