Through the tunnel (Jan 4th 2007)

It was sunny today! Hoorah
Hairy took us to Buttermere. In his car, not the Screature's. His car's got a bigger boot but it doesn't have air con. You win some...

There was this stupid sheep in front of us as we walked down the lane to the lake. It kept heading towards the locked gate at the end. It wouldn't go through any of the open ones we passed. When we got to the gate the daft thing just panicked and jumped onto the wall. It then stood there bleating as if in triumph. Sheep are very dim creatures. I mean, how sensible is a creature which uses as its defence tactics, stamping its front feet and weeing? Barking is much better - it puts the fear of god into people. (Not that we do it for that reason, honest!)
Look at me king of the stupids!

The stroll is very flat and easily walkable by raging geriatrics. They may take a little longer than us though! Actually there were a few wrinklies about but all of 'em were going reasonably quickly. Hairy stopped and snapped away with his camera but I aint gonna bore you with all his pictures. He thinks he's Lord Litchfield he's more like Lord Such!

Io had a big surprise when we got to the tunnel. She'd never been through it before. Here I am running away from it, pretending there's something big and scary inside waiting to get Io. She didn't fall for it, sadly. She's not as daft as you think, you know!It's one of those unspoken bits of the Lakes that doesn't get mentioned by anyone much. H. snapped away here too, even while we were inside the tunnel, so we got to see what it looked like for a split second. (It was, disappointingly, quite dull and rock-like really, not a twisting, glittering seam of undiscovered gold bearing strata or anything exciting like that to be seen.)

Sorry about the picture of the tunnel. I couldn't stop him. Look, just be glad he didn't post a picture of his car. He wanted to, but I was able to distract him and delete it. (It's only a Kia Rio anyway!)

The mountain at the end of Buttermere, Haystacks, has been on the telly recently with this youngish girly walking up it and waxing lyrical about it. They should have asked me to present it. I'd've done a much better job. "Dogs in the fells" would make great TV, wouldn't it? (We walked Haystacks in October 2005, with Uncle Tony and Wappy Sarah. It rained!)