Month: August 2021

Lost & Found on Cockup: Going the Extra Mile to Take our Litter Home after Walking up Bakestall

We continue to find hats, scarves, single gloves, walking poles and reusable water bottles on our walks in the Lake District and beyond. Stuff that people have dropped or put down and forgotten to pick up, or kit that has fallen out of their rucksack. On a recent trip up Bakestall behind Skiddaw we found out ourselves how easy it is to leave gear behind on the fells.

We took the long way up Bakestall, not just because we enjoy walking all day [we do] but because parking the Blue Bus isn’t always easy. It is only 5.4m long and 2.2m wide so can fit in a normal parking space and along a narrow lane but that isn’t the only consideration. Sometimes we decide to choose easier to reach but less popular parking and have a longer walk rather than negotiate a narrow lane only to find all the parking spots are taken [in the Lake District this can happen by 09.00]!

Bakestall isn’t often walked on its own, unless you are bagging your Wainwrights and didn’t go up it while you were walking up one of the nearby fells. This is why we were heading up this little hill at just 673m high and tucked away behind Skiddaw. If you are walking up it, own a car and are prepared to get up early you would park in the small parking area on the narrow lane that runs underneath the fell. On a fine August day we rightly guessed that this would be busy and so parked our campervan in a large lay-by just south of the Ravenstone Hotel on the A591, not a parking area for any obvious hill and so much quieter.

From here we walked steeply up the wooded hillside and out onto the open fell, descending down to the bridge over Chapel Beck and the minor road from the A591, picking up the track up Dash Beck a short distance along this road. From
Whitewater Dash falls we climbed up Bakestall and stopped to chat to a friendly walking group who were continuing onto Skiddaw. We took a good grassy route downhill, onto the steep slopes of Cockup and followed a path that skirted above the intake wall to rejoin our outgoing route by the ridge from Ullock Pike.

This was mostly a good path with stretches through bracken and short tricky sections in and out of gullies. It was going smoothly until we had a small cock up on Cockup. On one section of footpath through bracken, I was in front and just avoided tripping up on a stone hidden by undergrowth. Before I could warn my walking partner he tripped up and flew headlong into the grass and bracken. Ready to grab the first aid kit, I was relieved to find that nothing was broken or even cut. Neither of us could believe we had got away without damaging anything after such a dramatic fall.

Back at the ‘van we realised we hadn’t quite got away with it. Our favourite and most-used water bottle must have flown out of the outside rucksack pocket as my partner lost his footing on the fellside. We were gutted and it seemed ironic that two people who are always picking up lost items should themselves mislay something that will become litter on the hills. It seemed too far to go back so we tried to accept the loss but all evening it kept niggling!

The next day we had a fairly easy hike up Mungrisdale Common. It was mid-afternoon when we returned to the ‘van and we both knew what we were going to do. We drove the Blue Bus along the narrow lane to the bottom of Bakestall, thinking there was more likelihood of a parking space at that time of day. We were lucky, there was one space free that was Blue Bus size. Walking back along the road, we picked up the exceptionally steep path to the intake wall and followed our route through the bracken and gullies, all the time scouring the ground for the offending stone. Luck continued to be on our side and even in thick bracken, we spotted the trip hazard / stone and lying among the undergrowth was our precious water bottle. It only took us about an hour and 500m of climbing to find it! Never say we don’t take our litter home with us!

Rice & Beans with Avocado Salsa

Although I love a chip barm as much as the next person, some of my favourite meals are ones that ooze fresh vegetables. These are meals that taste fantastic and help you feel that you are bursting with vitamins! This rice and beans with avocado salsa is one of those dishes. There are many ways to cook rice and beans and I enjoy most of them. Almost twenty years ago I worked with the Caribbean community in Preston and would often visit the weekly lunch club. The fantastic cooks were all horrified that I didn’t eat meat but I was more than happy with a plateful of rice and beans, some vegetables or salad and a couple of the wonderful fried dumplings they made. The avocado salsa makes this a distinctive dish to the one I was served up then. It is colourful and tasty and still takes me back to those noisy and sociable lunches.

Ingredients for the rice and beans for two

  • Small can of cooked beans [around 200 g] – you can use black eye beans, cannellini beans, chickpeas or whatever your favourite is
  • 2 large fresh tomatoes [or 6-8 small tomatoes], chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • Around 125 g of brown rice [in our campervan I would use a pouch of quick cook / pre-cooked brown rice]
  • Some cooked green beans [these could be left overs, tinned [handy in the campervan], frozen or cooked just for this]
  • Tabasco sauce [optional]

Ingredients for the avocado salsa

  • 1 avocado
  • Lemon or lime juice
  • 1 small red onion, finely chopped or chopped spring onions
  • 1 chilli [according to your taste] deseeded and finely chopped
  • Fresh coriander, chopped
  • Sour cream or thick Greek yoghurt [optional]

You will need a large pan or wok, a chopping board and a sharp knife.

I tend to treat recipes as guidelines, rather than a hard and fast rule so don’t worry if there is something you don’t have in the cupboard or fridge. The dish works fine without fresh coriander for example and you could use another favourite vegetable instead of the green beans.

At home I would start by cooking the brown rice separately or use some leftover brown rice. Using leftover rice is safe so long as you follow these guidelines. At home I would also cook fresh green beans now.

In a wok or large pan, cook the onions until softened, add the tomatoes after five minutes and the crushed garlic and cook for a further five minutes or so.

In our campervan, as brown rice takes a while to cook, I would add one pouch of pre-cooked / quick cook brown rice to the pan after the garlic along with water and cook as the instructions suggest. If the green beans need cooking I would add these now too, making this a one-pot dish.

The rice and beans are now mostly an assembly job. Add the rice [if you haven’t already] the tinned beans and the green beans [if you haven’t already] to the onion and tomato mixture. Stir it well and season with pepper and salt to your taste. I usually stir in some Tabasco sauce at this point, remembering my Caribbean Lunch Club days. If you are not ready to eat this now, make sure you keep it warm.

While this is cooking, make the salsa. This is simple! Peel the avocado and chop it finely and add the finely chopped onion, chilli and fresh coriander. Stir everything together with the juice of 1/2 a lemon or one lime.

Serve the rice and beans with the salsa on the top and I like to add a dollop of thick Greek yoghurt. Enjoy!

Are England’s Campsites Full?

In this almost-normal summer of 2021, most people are staying in the UK, ‘staycation’ has come to mean going on holiday in your own country and the media is packed with stories about overflowing car parks at beauty spots and there being no room at the inn. So if you haven’t booked a pitch for August, can you still find anywhere to park your campervan in England?

We returned from our Scotland and Ireland trip in July with nothing planned for the months ahead. Reading the media reports about the burden on our tourism infrastructure, even with few tourists arriving from other countries, I became concerned. It also seemed as if everyone had taken up camping and pop-up sites were appearing to take the strain. Had we made a massive mistake by not booking anywhere for July and August months ago? In this mayhem what were the chances of finding a free pitch anywhere within 200 miles of home. I had nightmares about being confined to Morecambe again, not because of Lock Down Four this time but because of my own lack of organisation.

I should have remembered that you can’t believe everything you read or hear in the media!

What I find strange in this new Covid-19 world, where social distancing has become socially acceptable, is that the small campsites for five units that come under the umbrella of the Caravan and Motorhome Club, the mysteriously named Certificated Locations [CLs], are not full to bulging. I thought, being small and usually in the countryside, these sites would be many people’s first choice. Of course, they have their fans but during July we have stayed on a couple of these and both were booked just a few days before we set off and both had availability.

Even though the school holidays had arrived, we had three nights at a lovely CL, Pool Bank, near Otley in the hot weather [top photograph]. The site was full but that wasn’t surprising given the exceptional sunny weather.

Buoyed by this success and keen to have a few days of hill walking I rang a favourite CL in the Lake District, Upper Hawthwaite Farm [middle picture]. I tentatively asked if they had a couple of nights free over the next two weeks. We could be flexible and were willing to consider any dates. I had taken in all the media reports about the Lake District being over-crowded this summer and was surprised when I was told they had space on any night. We not only got a pitch last minute, when we arrived there were still two pitches free!

CLs do take a bit of an effort to book. You often need to ring to book, pay in cash when you arrive and many have no facilities. I welcome the website and app that is now offering online booking for a selection of CLs. This is the future and I hope that this will eventually include most of them and make booking easier. But for 2021, booking a CL can take a bit more time but they are certainly worth the effort.

There are rumours that there have been more no-shows at campsites this year and reports that some people have double booked campsites, deciding at the last minute which to go to. This seems a lot of effort to me, it’s time consuming enough deciding on one site, never mind two! Talking to one campsite owner for a September booking, they explained they weren’t taking deposits but asked that I ring and let them know if we were unable to come along. I replied, ‘Of course, I would always do that.’ She then explained that just that weekend [one of the hot ones] they had four units who were booked and had not turned up. They were upset as, due to the good weather, they could have filled those pitches many times over and had turned people away. Is this why we are seeing free pitches at campsites?

After my success with CLs, I then booked a couple of nights on The Larches, an adult-only campsite in the north Lakes. This isn’t the cheapest campsite but it is a well-run and friendly site that was ideally placed for a couple of hills we wanted to walk up. Amazingly they had space for us even though they are limiting numbers due to Covid-19. This year they are giving every unit a treat with their own private shower room in the facilities block.

I don’t know if adult-only sites are more or less popular in the school holidays. We only look for them at this time of year and I expected to struggle to find availability but have been pleasantly surprised. It seems only fair to me that we stay out of the way of families who can only take their holidays when the schools are out and not compete with them for pitches on sites that welcome children. This is a bit like the rule that states you shouldn’t go shopping in the supermarket during lunchtime when you are no longer working! Or is it just me that thinks it is only fair to give those workers who are dashing to the supermarket in their short lunch break a bit of space?

Our final night in the Lake District was a free overnight spot. Again, with so many people out and about in their campervans we wondered if we would find a space. As you can guess we had no problems.

After now booking another campsite for mid-August I am thinking that the claims that England’s campsites are full doesn’t seem to stack up in the north of England. I wonder if it is different at the seaside or in the south of England.