Lake District 2011 Holiday Report

All photographs on this page (and more) can be viewed on our Lake District 2011 Photo Gallery.

Our holiday home this year was right in the middle of Keswick. When booking I was a bit unsure if it would be OK as on Skye we have always been in the middle of nowhere. However, the house was lovely and being in town didn't detract from the holiday at all, we even got to go to the puzzle museum.

Sunday 10th July 2011

We started off the holiday (as we always do) with everyone going out together. Last year on Skye the first walk was a long one. This year, because the weather forecast was good we opted for a short walk (only 7.5 km) but with a lot of ascent to reach the top of Red Pike above Borrowdale. Little did we know that we'd be blessed with good weather all week so our early peak and fine view bagging was unnecessary.

I think that people come on our holidays for a number of reasons, some are obvious like the social side of a group holiday or to be shown around an area that we know well but our guests may never have been to. Others are not so obvious, on this walk we were able to take out guests to a place that some of them would not have attempted unless assisted by Mountain Leaders. On this route one of our guests exclaimed 'if my children could see me now!' as we negotiated a short rocky step.

Once at the top we split into a group of fast descenders and a group of slow descenders to get back to the cottage.

Skye 2010 Holiday Report

All photographs on this page (and more) can be seen on our main Skye 2010 gallery page.

Saturday 15th May 2010

Our first pick-up was in Glasgow at 14:00. Last year we picked up in Glasgow at noon but this year we had to make it a bit later as 2 people couldn't make it before 2pm. We had 8 guests this year and decided to take 3 of us to host the week. How good is that. How many other walking holiday companies give you 3 qualified Mountain Leaders to 8 clients for a £600 week long holiday. In truth there was only really 2.5 staff as Dave was going to do his own thing most days and do a bit of the cooking.

Marshy, who was traveling further than Dave and I had set off the night before and was close to Fort William as we were picking up in Glasgow. We weren't sure of the amount of luggage space so he met up with the Fort William people and took their luggage off them while we picked them up in the people carrier.