Again, I woke earlier than Luca, this time I watched as the weather gradually improved and the sun burnt through the cloud. It was going to be a beautiful, sunny day. We'd also agreed that this would be our last day, rather than continuing for a fourth day - largely because I thought that the final few miles home were likely to be pretty dull and we would both be very tired by tomorrow, better to really push ourselves today and not prolong things too much.
We had tomato soup for breakfast and packed up our kit. The initial ascent was fairly steep (partly because I took the wrong route), and we both grappled with how to keep ourselves ventilated. As always, we made fairly steady, but respectable progress and before too long we were at the top of Helvellyn. I was surprised at just how many people had taken the Striding Edge route (it looked quite comically populated with little stick people when viewed from a distance), but with our back packs and tired legs I knew it would have been the wrong thing for us to undertake.
There were a couple of points on the descent where I worried that I'd gotten us lost, but my fears were unfounded. We were relieved to Grisedale Tarn at which point all complicated navigation was over, as was any ascent, or even steep descent - the rest of the walk would just be about mileage.
We stopped for a well earned rest just North of Grasmere and then continued on our way, taking shortcuts from the road where we could. It was warm now and we were tired. It was good to be walking on even tarmac, but equally, we were both counting down the miles to Ambleside which we'd decided would be our stopping point. From Ambleside we'd get a bus back to Coniston.
We finally made it back to Ambleside. I really fancied a nice big steak and ale pie and chips and a decent local beer. But we struggled to find anywhere suitable. We went past a Chinese and Luca said he wanted to go in there, so we did that - against my better judgement (Chinese food isn't the best after walk meal!). We then set off to find the bus stop, only to be told that the last bus to Coniston left about 2 hours ago. So we got a taxi back. Our taxi driver was a very chatty Scouser - why are there so many Liverpudlians in the Lakes? He estimated we'd done about 45 miles, but I think it was quite a bit less than that.
We got back into the car and set off for home. A good 3 days walking indeed.
