Work Out, Ennerdale.

Every day is different but some days more so. Today started at 06.00 with cloudless blue skies and warmth already permeating the air. Being inside cooking bacon, sausage and egg  again for the Junior sailing regatta might have been a chore, but the sunlight creating a pathway of shimmering light from Skiddaw down to the front door of the sailing club, took the buttering of baps experience up to new heights. The sailing experience, alas, was as yesterday, non-existent. No wind.

Work began at 10.00 with my being posted on Ranger patrol to Ennerdale, largely to monitor any weekend camping activity and check no fires were being lit. 
Probably because the summer holidays don't start until next week and because there is a great volunteer group based in the valley there was little to report. Rubbish was at a minimum, I didn't find any illegal tents and there were no tell-tale smoke signals.  I spent a sweaty, dusty time clearing a few old camp fires, removing stones, picking out aluminium foil  and scattering ash residue. On one of the pretty pine-edged promontories  one group had taken the trouble to hack out a firepit  a meter across, through the root system of two old pines, close to their trunks. Presumably they don't know that tree-trunks are the same material as the sticks they are burning and also  don't understand the physics of how a pine tree uses its lateral roots to refrain from falling down.. 

I was just leaving Bowness Knott feeling a little dispirited from this when, as happens so often, something else occurred to cheer everything up. A woman in a car flagged me down and told me that her son had hurt his leg  and she needed to pick him up.  She and another Mum had walked in with their kids, of assorted ages, up to Black Sail YH the previous day and  were now walking out. Could I let her through the gate? 

I had noticed the group whilst driving up the valley so of course I said I could accompany her in and let them out them out when collected. 
When we arrived at the 'collapse' point we found the other Mum had sensibly taken them all into the water, where they were bobbing around like a flock of goslings. Hooray! I had been dying to have a swim myself but hadn't thought I had any time in the schedule. But obviously, no-one was going to be dry and ready to get in their car for at least 10 mins, so in I hopped. Bliss. Dust and annoyance washed off . 
Then, according to the state of their little legs they all limped or jumped into their car and we drove merrily back to the entrance and went our ways.
As this had taken up my lunch slot I finished the checks and, before driving back to Whinlatter, nipped around to 'The Gather' at Ennerdale Bridge for a take away coffee and extremely chocolatey home-made florentine.