Sitting Out The Storm

Perfect camping weather, it is howling a gale outside. The wind is buffeting the tent, I realise that I've pitched tent at the wrong angle, and the rain is lashing down. L would call it romantic.

We have also camped in a bit of a wet spot but I think we're going to be all right, I could do without the wet dog in the tent though. Oh and I wake up in the middle of the night, fearing I'm suffocating. Either a Russian frogman is trying to slit my throat or my sinuses are all bunged up.

In the interests of the romantic setting, I don't fight L off, despite the fact she had garlic mushrooms last night, and in any case we have to sit out the storm. Doggo is keeping a very low profile, he doesn’t intend going out in that rain again, if he can possibly help it.

We eventually emerge around 11am, once the rain has stopped. After a reviving shower, I discover that my hangover isn't as bad as I thought.

We drive to Hawkshead, to a pub where we have stayed before, where we intend to have lunch. Two years ago, we stopped there with Doggo in the room and ate with him in the bar. The new owners, probably a pub group, now ban dogs from rooms and from the bar area before 9.30pm. The landlady is out on the steps having a cigarette and in the interests of needing some customers; she relaxes the rules for us. The roast lamb is good as is the Cocker Hoop ale. Shame about the anti-dog stance, this is the Lakes for God's sake, dog ownership is practically compulsory.

Around 3.30, revived, we head for home. Obviously there is a hold up on the motorway because there always is and then it starts snowing on us. It gets quite heavy at one point. This is really annoying, why couldn't it have snowed when we wanted it to, last night while we were in Lakeland. I text Daughter to tell her we’ll be late picking her up. She’s not happy because she’ll now be late for her 8pm date with Richard Hammond.

Back home we lounge in the bath for a while then share a huge Cumberland sausage that we’ve brought back with us and a couple of glasses of red wine.

We watch another episode of Bleak House. In this episode, the character Krook, played by Johnny Vegas, dies in rather unusual circumstances. Dickens, when he wrote this part of the story, was severely criticized for using spontaneous human combustion to kill off Krook. It was at that time thought a plausible way to die, but even so Dickens was accused of perpetuating a vulgar and unscientific superstition. Dickens himself claimed to know of many documented cases.



37 units. It was the Old Peculier’s fault.