DAY THIRTY-NINE: KESWICK

Is Keswick England's most dog-friendly holiday location?  

In a word: yes.

There are dogs everywhere; dogs on the street, often on leash, almost as often not.  There are dogs in shops, dogs in beer gardens, dogs waiting patiently for a table at a Mexican tapas joint, a genre of restaurant I never knew existed.  Dogs in bars, sitting under the table

Keswick is mad about dogs. 

but also standing in the aisle as a waiter tries to get by.  Dogs going crazy over some new chew toy while their owners down a pint.  There are statues of dogs, paintings of dogs, photos of dogs, framed prints with whimsical sayings... about dogs.  Dog jewelry.  Dog-themed gifts.   The Werewolves on London got nothing on the Dogs of Keswick. 

There are dogs walking the Derwentwater Trail, even the part where you have to go off of the original trail and walk through a field of very bored-looking sheep, though I can't really say if they stayed bored once that dog whose owner had it running all over the place reached them, because we were already through the field and into the woods when that happened.  This was early in the hike, before the confusion started.

Counter to what you may have heard or assumed, Sandra Bullock and I don't spend all of our time sitting in a pub, drinking beer and eating french fries.  Sometimes, on days like today, we go on ridiculously long hikes.  We don our hiking clothes, always vowing that, when we return to the states, we'll go buy more up-to-date outdoors garb.  We buy or download a map.  We throw several jackets into our backpacks because you should just assume that it's going to sunny then cloudy, then really warm and then it's going to rain.  We argue for a few minutes about where the trail begins and then we set out.

Last night we decided that for our one full, unplanned day in Keswick we would take a hike like this.  We would walk completely around Derwentwater Lake, even though nobody who works at our hotel has ever done it.  One guy made it halfway.  Total estimated distance:  10 miles.  Or eight miles, depending on which map you believe.  (Here's a thing that I can't quite get my head around; England and Scotland, whom I'd always assumed were the drivers behind the U.S.'s 1970s brief flirtation with the metric system, use miles, not kilometers.  Everything else is metric, but they use miles like us.)  The really lame tourist map we got at the hotel said 10 miles but also was so incomprehensible that we had to go to the tourist office, something we used to scoff at but now do regularly (shoutout Pilar in Dingle), and buy what we'd hoped was a better map.

It was not.  It wasn't even a map.  It was a narrative of the trail that may have been useful had sections of the trail not been underwater thanks to yesterday's heavy rains.  We paid 60 p for it anyway and, ignoring the tourist office lady's suggestion to go "anti-clock ways," we followed the signs "TO LAKE" and started clock ways, passing through a beautiful little park on the way.

Early in the walk, things were easy.

The sun was shining.  Everyone (and their dog) was out walking this trail, meandering next to the lake in their updated hiking clothes.  Almost no one was wearing sagging REI cargo pants that zip off at the knee, except this one guy.

"This is easy," remarked Sandra Bullock (who, despite acting like she's someone wearing a tired pair of sagging REI pants, was actually clad in some snappy trekking pants from Athleta) as we strolled by the lake.  

"Yes," I said.  "It's sort of like a giant Green Lake.  All we have to do is make sure the lake stays on our right."

We had been warned by the tourist office lady that the Chinese Bridge might be impassible because the rain may have "made everything a bit boggy."  I pictured fog, marsh gases, dragonflies.  The Chinese Bridge did turn out to be closed, which added about two more miles to our trip, but by the time we got there we were so far from our simple, well-marked trail that the closure barely registered.

The first sign of trouble came early.  Less than a mile in we reached a sign saying something about a “diversion.”  “Like watching a sitcom?” I asked, completely unclear on both the British definition of “diversion” as it relates to hiking and the universal definition of a clever play on words.

“I think we’re supposed to go this way,” Sandra Bullock said.  But the lake was so pretty, and this walk so pleasant, we ignored the sign; and kept ignoring it until it became impossible to ignore because the trail ended.  Okay, we said, we’ll take the diversion.

Sheep doing the downward sheep pose.

Soon we were in the aforementioned field of sheep.  Sheep all around.  Sheep within feet of us.  Sheep doing yoga while all the other sheep laid around, eating grass.  We walked carefully through the sheep and entered a forest.  

The trail turned muddy and narrow.  “As long as we see other people, we’re okay,” advised Bullock.  People were everywhere still, so we were okay, and eventually the diversion ended.  All was well, briefly.

The next problem was more dire and frankly, a little freaky.  Parts of the trail began disappearing under water.  The recent rains had raised the level of the lake, dramatically in places.  Finally, we came to a spot where the trail had become a rushing stream.  “Um,” I said.

Sandra Bullock cannot be stopped by a mere stream.  With confidence one can only gain by a childhood spent camping, she began fording.  I stood back, carefully choosing a path.  My dumb shoes are waterproof, but ironically have very slippery soles.  Soon an English couple who I’ll call George and Martha arrived.  They were completely geared up in outdoor wear.  George carried a real map, inside a plastic sheath.  I looked at them and shrugged my shoulders.  Eventually, with Sandra Bullock already on the other side, the three of us followed across the stream.  Though we would never introduce ourselves, have a conversation past “where are you from?” and wouldn’t exactly hike “together,” we were never more than 75 feet from George and Martha for the next hour of the hike, including a diversion to a waterfall where I discovered too late that we were actually following them without realizing it.

We continued on.

What I don't like is when things that are
supposed to be above water are under water.

The path got steep, rutted and narrow.  We kept trying to find the original path.  Sometimes it would appear for a hundred feet or so then disappear again under water, which, I’m going to admit right here kind of freaked me out.  What I don’t like is things that disappear under water.  Or things that are supposed to be several feet above water but have water right up to their edge.  I’ve had nightmare about it, in fact, roads disappearing under water.  But I kept my mouth shut.  Every time Sandra Bullock or Martha (George and I tended to hang back, even when we were 75 feet apart) tried some new, sketchy-looking path, I followed dutifully.

Ultimately, it became too much.  We were forced onto the 1.5 lane road and spent about a half-hour dodging cars.  

Beauty overwhelmed us (when we weren’t dodging cars).  The lake, the mountains, the charming little villages.  Even Sandra Bullock, who was having trouble letting go of the idea that there was somewhere a MORE EFFICIENT WAY to handle these trail washouts, a secret path somewhere that was untouched or at least semi-passable, was blown away by the beauty, taking dozens of photos that she is presently curating so that only 10 of them will appear on her Facebook page.

The great thing about Keswick is not the dogs, it’s the outdoorsy lifestyle.  Hotels in the middle of nowhere had signs welcoming “dogs and walkers!”  And Catholics, one has to presume.  Not sure about Jews, though nobody said anything when we snuck into the Lodore Hotel and Spa to use the bathroom.

When we reached the Chinese Bridge, shortly after Lodore, it was immediately obvious that we would not be crossing.  We would not be coming anywhere near the bridge, in fact, because it sat far across what was probably a field three days ago but was now

English countryside awesomeness

part of the lake.  Not a puddle.  Part of the lake.  We all stood there, George, Martha, Sandra Bullock, a few other hikers, and me.  "I guess we go on the road?" I volunteered.  

A woman who may or may not have heard me wasn't having it.  Without a word, she strode out into the water and marched toward the distant Chinese Bridge.  The water came up to her knees but she kept going, wearing a coy smile.  "Well, what do you think?" George asked.

"You've got to be kidding," Martha said.  

We took the road, but I did think about whether or not we should've followed, until Sandra Bullock reminded me that following would mean walking in completely soaked shoes and socks for the rest of the hike.   Soon George and Martha caught up to us.  "Couldn't talk her into it?" I asked George.

"She wouldn't do it," he said.

"I considered it," I offered.

"I didn't," Martha snapped.

The village of Grange blew me away.

After this, we continued to be equal parts confused and charmed by the English countryside, crossing stone bridges and putting aside our confusion once and for all at Grange, where we bid our non-friends George and Martha farewell, gave up on finding the original trail and set for home on the now 1.25 lane country road.  There were enough other hikers to keep Sandra Bullock calm, though her anxiety at not finding the secret better trail continued to sometimes get the better of her (“I see people over there!  There’s another trail!  How do we get there?”) until I had a talk with her late in the day.  “Accept this trail,” I said, Yoda-like.  “It’s the right trail.  It’ll get us back.”

By then we’d actually found the suddenly well-marked Derwentwater trail.  We took it near the water, away from the water, past some houses, through a few more fields.  The miles piled up.  By mile 10, still two miles from home, we were tired, hungry and determined not only to finish but also to walk faster than anyone else on the trail.  We made it back to Keswick at 2:40, doing the 12 miles in about four-and-a-half hours, proud but tired and suddenly very aware that not only had we hiked 12 miles but we’d done it without a break.  No casual sandwich at the visitor center, a la Cliffs of Moher.  No sitting on the side of a hill, staring at sheep and reflecting.  Just walking. 

Which is why our pre-planned “walk around town and look into shops” ended up quite truncated and we didn’t even really explore Fitzgerald Park, partly because by the time we got to where they were playing cricket the match had ended.  Never let anyone tell you that I went to England, Scotland and Ireland and didn’t do my best to watch in person a sport I’d never seen before.  I tried, but the Gods wouldn't allow it.

No, we were pretty tired after completing the second-most epic walk of this sabbatical, so in the end we did what we know how to do: sat in a pub and had a beer and french fries.

Here are today’s mostly achy but ready to bounce back numbers:

32,974 — steps completed before dinner. 

109 — times I took off my glasses, put on my sunglasses, and did the reverse during today’s walk.

36:1 — ratio of dogs to children in Keswick.  The ratio of dogs to cats in not measurable.  There are no cats.

3.75 — number of times you’d have to walk around Seattle’s Green Lake to equal the distance around Derwentwater Lake.  “And that’s all flat and paved,” - S. Bullock. 

1 — cheese and onion Cornish pasty consumed in the late afternoon.  Yesterday we had two, but today we shared one.

6 — alcohol percentage cutoff that will prevent a pub from stocking a particular beer, per the cheerful guy at the Keswick Brewing Company.  “The English drink beer differently than you’re used to,” he advised.  “They’ll sit down and have seven or eight.  You can’t do that if your beer has more than five or six percent alcohol.”

4 — rivers crossed during today’s walk.  Not sure if Jimmy Cliff would consider that “many,” which didn’t stop me from having that song stuck in my head after we crossed the second one.

Probably the best thing about completing the Lap of Derwentwater is that tomorrow, while we’re sitting on a (hopefully eight-person) bus for our “Spectacular 10 Lakes Tour,” we can say, “Oh, yeah, we walked around this yesterday” when we get to Derwentwater.  Which is always a nice thing to have in your back pocket.