Up the hill

This picture is after lunch on the middle of day 1.  The weather was good today, a little bit of sun but largely still and cloudy.  

The answer to my camping challenge was that I slept ridiculously badly last night, only for about an hour and that affected me all day.  At least I managed to read a great deal of my book, Longbourn by Jo Baker. 

Breakfast of croissants and bacon sandwiches and we groomed the ponies and learnt how to put their kit on and load up the packs.  It was an incredibly efficient operation and we were taught well.  As we set off the first discovery for me was that the ponies are strong and that, despite being told to be the boss they set the pace.  I found quickly I couldn’t keep up with Little Prince, who I picked for sentimental reasons as I had a childhood pony called Prince, particularly when we shot up the first hill.  I was so out of breath that I decided to always take the hills at my pace and trudge up behind.  

We arrived in the area where a re-wilding programme was underway and the valley was incredibly beautiful.  We had a lunch of soup and bread and various nibbles and I managed 40 winks. The ponies were relieved of their packs and kit and tethered to graze.  At the top of the next hill we saw a wild Fell stallion on the skyline. In the afternoon I led the smaller and younger pony Polly who I really enjoyed handling.  In the late afternoon we arrived at a hilltop bothy which was probably an abandoned farmhouse.  Although it was a bit basic with bare floors and large platforms which could be commandeered as beds, I decided to sleep inside and made it as warm and cosy as I could.  A pair of slightly bemused young Spanish men turned up, these bothies of course open to anyone and they livened up the place. 

We had an early dinner of a chick pea curry cooked by Tom on a charcoal camping stove, with flatbreads and strawberries. The sun came out and the light was golden.  A large herd of deer were on the top of a nearby hill.   Early night.