Getting to Seatoller

    We walked off so innocently that morning on an easy path around Ennerdale Water, along the lake, a long, long way around a quiet lake.  We didn't see a soul. And then gently, so as you'd hardly notice, it began to rain. Rain is not a big problem if you've got the gear to deal with it and can get it on before you're soaked, but there's not much you can do about fog.
      After the Black Sail Youth Hostel (which was closed) a notation on the map advises the hiker "not to take the obvious path."  Why the hell not? Just to make it all more fun? We search for a less obvious path. Is that a path? Or is it just the way the sheep frequently trod? It might be a path, but in the rain, it is rapidly turning into a drainage ditch.  
        We climb a drumlin and scan the grass and heather for a path.   Drumlins, by the way, are peculiar  little bumps in the topography. Too small to be called "hills", these are closely spaced along the riverside. Elves probably live there. These particular drumlins are also populated by large, black cows.  We check anxiously, but none of them seem to have penises. Still, they are very large and seem potentially menacing. What do we know about cows? And we're in their drumlins.  
         Finally, far off, on the other side of the river, we sight the only humans we've seen all day. They are tiny spots of brightly colored goretex moving down the hillside but we alter our trajectory to intersect with theirs and form a little tribe of Americans and Australians, wet and possibly lost, climbing stone steps that lead straight up a ravine into the fog. (An Englishwoman I  met the next day told me she has an OCD habit of counting steps and counted 950 before she quit.) The map says we are to climb, not to the top of the hill, but to the top of Loft Beck, that is, to the top of a creek.  Which is an odd concept, but sure enough, suddenly the creek disappears and we are at the top completely enveloped in cloud. 
       There is a strong suspicion that we are in the middle of a breath-taking landscape of mountain peaks. However, we could be on the moon for all we can see. The map tells us that what we need to find now are cairns. "Cairn" is a word of either Norse or Celtic derivation, I'm guessing, that means "a man-made pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere." They mark trails. They are made of locally sourced material.  When you're lost in the fog, spotting a cairn is immensely reassuring, take my word for it.  If the fog ever comes in so densely that you can't see from one cairn to the next, you might as well resign yourself to life up there with the sheep. 

      Eventually we traipse within sight and sound of civilization, an old slate mine turned museum/adventure sports center, and there's a cafe! Did I mention that one is disinclined to picnic in steady rain and so we have hiked all day without a bite since our (admittedly copious) English breakfast? But since it seems we are going to live after all, we are suddenly starving.  We sup on (hot!) potato and leek soup at the slate mine.  Best potato and leek soup ever.