Right, here is my first post about our first trip to Rum, and my first trip to the Scottish Highlands. Basic itinery for the visit was….
Drive to Mallaig, ferry to Rum, do Askival, then ferry back, and camp at Loch Lomond hopefully doing my first Munro – The Ben. However, to break the 453 mile journey between home and Mallaig, we would stay in the Lakes during the weekend before the ferry to Rum and camp in Yorkshire on the way back.
After some thought about where to stay in the Lakes, I decided upon Clarence House, Keswick which was great – nice and close to town thus enabling any drunken stumbles back from the pub, and breakfast was nice. Saturday morning was spent around town buying some nice Salamon Quest boots for cheryl – very light for relatively high ankled boots. Props to George Fisher for excellent boot fixing service.
Once we had recovered from a wallet bashing, we tried some authentic lake district grub from Greggs the bakers – a pastie and sausage roll eaten outside a women’s clothes shop – classy! At least we managed sufficient calories to enable us to complete Catbells despite the hail and rain. Gear report alert – Cheryl’s boots and new Pacer Poles both performance brilliantly!
Walked up Catbells, but was cloudy and hail was persistent!
Back in Keswick, we had Saturday dinner at the Bank Tavern which was great, although we did break the no pudding rule of the holiday! What the hell, we still had a Corbett and Munro over the next few days to burn it off, and that sticky toffee pudding was worth it.
Sunday morning, we enjoyed breakfast before starting the mammoth drive north to the fishing village of Mallaig to get the ferry to Rum.
More to continue…