Trowbarrow climbing

This weekend I went climbing out at Trowbarrow with the mountaineering club. Trowbarrow was an old quarry. Basically it was a sight that was blown up with dynamite for people to come collect rocks to build their homes. Since most of our homes are built of wood in the states it was a little odd for me to first hear the purpose of it.

It was a really nice train ride out, and we were able to walk straight from the station, on a path through an overgrown forest through old gates, to the quarry. From the top we were able to see the bay and the mountains from the lake district dusted with snow. It was a classic beautiful.

I didn't actually climb too much, I didn't feel the need to like usual. I did one second and tried "the project" of Gaz's. All of the climbing is trad, but it seems like because it is so the climbing isn't as difficult. It's more about being scared out of your wits than actually climbing, haha. I had a good time just looking around the area and being caught up in the moment. I managed to get sunburned in the little time the sun was shining too.

I rode in someone from the club's car on the way back and it was eye opening. When you ride the train, you see a different part of the land. I felt a lot closer being able to see where we were going on a road. Also, it was pretty scary driving on the left and having the driver on the right. The roads were super narrow and we had to pull over to let people pass us going the opposite direction.

Here are some pictures!

And Then Anna Came

I had a mountaineering club social event the other day, and the band started playing come on Eileen. Everyone got really excited when it started playing and began to dance and none of them knew my real name is Ilene. It's the little joys in life : ) We danced in a circle with our arms around each other jumping up and down taking turns in the middle, it was great!

I went to pick Anna up from the train station and found my way there in the dark from the bus station surprisingly easy. I saw her standing in the train as soon as she pulled up and my heart exploded! I was so happy to see her! That night we went out to a club called Element with my friends. I decided I don't like clubs. We came back to campus fairly late and crashed.

We got up and got on a train to Windemere, a quaint little town in the lake district after spending an hour or so exploring the town and giving her a chance to see the castle.

The train ride was beautiful!! I'm not sure I'll ever get sick of the rolling hills, sheep, green pastures, rock and bush fences, and ocean sightings.

Once we were in Windemere, we weren't really sure what to do. We jumped on a bus and a jolly old man (the bus driver) tried to tell us where to go. To bad we weren't really sure what he was saying. We got off at what looked like a good spot once we started getting into a valley, and we walked down a road that led to what seemed like a trail head parking lot.

 We may have been trespassing...not too sure.

From there, we went up. The ground was rather muddy and the plants were windblown flat down. They were red fern-like plants that sounded crunchy when you stepped on them. We ran into some sheep and got "ba-ba black sheep" stuck in our heads for the rest of the excursion. At the top, the views were beautiful! A different beautiful from Glacier, but more or less they shared the same beauty. We were able to see two different lakes from where we were and saw many mountains in the distance (along with some covered in snow : ) ). It was windy--nuf said. On our way down, we saw some other hikers, so we tried to avoid them seeing us because we were on the other side of the fence. When we were back in town, I got an "explorers map" and managed to find that we were on Lanty Scar and the land we were on was color coded like the national park, so who knows.

We saw a sign for a "tea room" and decided to follow it.

It was a wonderful idea.

It was getting late, so we decided to get on the bus again. We went as far as we could with the ticket we got and managed to get to Gresmere and wandered around a bit. We found a bus stop and eventually got on and went back to Windemere and to the train back to Lancaster. We made a lovely pasta dinner after making a grocery stop and had a lovely girls night with a wee wine celebrating friendship and time together.