Little Quest - Cumbria

Look at the water in that...

Sunday 25th July 2010

It is so unfair....some counties just have it all. For example Cumbria....its the type of county that if you were to fly a plane over it, and drop a cache from the plane, when you were to discover where it landed it would still be an amazing place. The Lake District as Cumbria is more famously known is a place where you can still go and find wilderness in the good old U.K. Team Shiltonpig rolled into town...it was soon clear that this cache required some necessity to go uphill. Probably the highest

Mount Everest

cache so far on the little quest trail. It was soon apparent that Josh and Mrs Shiltonpig might find this one a little hard and so it was left to poor old Mr Shiltonpig to climb what seemed like Mount Everest by the time he got to the top. But I am getting ahead of myself....the cache itself lies on the outskirts of Coniston, near a mountain called the "Old Man of Coniston"...not sure why its called an old man but I can guarantee you that Mr Shiltonpig aged several years walking to the top. It had started so easily and with no Josh on his shoulders, he was walking faster uphill than he had done all year. The path was easy

Some counties have all the luck...

and the gradiant of the hill was just the right incline. But for some reason when the gps showed there was 0.34 miles to go, things became a lot harder....Mr Shiltonpig just couldn't see a clear path to the top and so decided to cross the river....that was easier said than done, while it was not deep, it was deep enough so that you didn't want to get wet in it. After doing several triple somersaults across and doing a rather neat run, skip and a jump, Mr Shiltonpig found himself on the right side of the river....but more perils awaited. Next up he still couldn't find any path of any description and he

Coniston water in the distance

soon found himself wading through ferns up to his waist. This is much harder than it sounds and energy levels soon dipped, and with no other team member to keep him going he was soon in low morale. But he kept going through wet grass, leech infested ferns and dangerous rocks that said "I want to break your ankle" as you walked past. Somehow each 0.01 of a mile seemed to last like a whole mile itself. But finally the gps read 314 feet and the cache was in sight...however it soon become apparent that he was going to have to climb over the top of a cliff to get it....energy levels were now seriously low and he was regretting not having that extra slice of bacon for breakfast. It was a death defying act of selflessness that made Mr Shiltonpig decide to keep going and look for that quest. Josh and Mrs Shiltonpig would never had been able to forgive him for not getting the little quest co-ordinates. So step by step and stone by stone Mr Shiltonpig climbed up what seemed like every mountain put together and finally reached the summit. Once the cache was found, he sat on the rock edge and admired the cache and the views...he pulled out his can of pepsi max and felt like the advert says "live life to the max". He reflected on how beautiful Cumbria really is and then reminded himself that every county has its weak points....for Cumbria its Barrow on Furness....and so another 78 miles are added onto the overall total which means team Shiltonpig have travelled 606 miles to get just 9 Little Quests already!

Sorry there is no photo of Mr Shiltonpig