Short walk to Angle Tarn

 I spent last weekend camping at Side Farm campsite with my sister and nephew, and a friend and her daughter, right on the shore of Ullswater Lake. It was a fabulous weekend, great company, the weather was lovely- perhaps a little hot but it made playing in the lake more fun. I would recommend Side Farm, as long as you are not of a nervous disposition as they don't take bookings and so it was a little scary hoping they would have a pitch free. (I had many back up plans!)

On the Saturday morning my nephew asked me if he could come camping on a mountain with me, he just turned 7 so I think that is the perfect age to begin. We were planning on climbing up to Angle Tarn that day so I figured that would be a good test of his stamina - turns out that he can out pace me by a lot uphill! In fact he complained more coming back down- I'd maybe overdone my safety talk about being careful on the way down but I didn't want to lose him over the steep slopes of Place Fell!

We took our time on the 2 miles up to the tarn, I find that at the moment I struggle with hills and have to take them really slowly in order to survive. The two kids were at the top well before me and were getting a little frustrated - I blamed that I was carrying a heavy bag with way more water than we would need but I was paranoid after last week!

Once we reached the tarn we found a quiet spot and stopped for lunch, we had a paddle and Emma nearly lost her foam sit mat in the water- with some team work (i.e. Gem holding on to Emma's legs while I laughed and took photos), it was successfully retrieved.

I gave the kids a talk about going back down carefully before we set off back down, Rowan then promptly took a tumble, luckily not near the sheer drop part of the path - thus proving my point and resulting in them heeding my wise words for the rest of the way.

I was a lot more tired than I feel I should have been considering that the walk was only about 5 miles in total but I guess that is due to my general weight gain and lack of exercise recently. I did manage to recover enough to go paddle boarding the following day, a new love of mine!!