Summer Weekend

To celebrate another brilliant year for Ramsoc a very excited group of ramblers headed to the Lake District for our annual summer weekend away, to enjoy a wonderful few days of hills, lakes, mountains, stunning scenery and the hope of some sunshine!



As always we had a selection of walks on offer on the Saturday, ranging from a bimble around the local countryside, to taking on the challenge of scrambling on Blencathra. Those of us that chose the pretty countryside bimble certainly had a wonderfully relaxing day, taking in the beautiful scenery and wildlife (may be more than we anticipated, due to an ever so slight navigational issue) and enjoying a lovely mid afternoon cup of tea (with free cake!), in a nice little tea room.

Arriving back at the hostel it was clear everyone else had an equally brilliant day exploring the Lake District and were ready to finish the day off perfectly with lots of barbequed food, plenty of drinks and some wonderful desserts! A brilliant evening was had by Ramsoc members old and new, our mascot Ram also had a wonderful time, making a new friend, Borrowdale Bear!


Bright and early on Sunday morning, after a comfortable night in a brilliant hostel everyone piled onto the minibuses, some a little worse for wear, ready for another day out on the hills. This time I decided to tackle a walk that was a little more challenging and opted for climbing Hellvelyn, including a scramble along Striding Edge. The ascent up to the edge was pretty long and quite wet, due to us walking in the clouds, but after a lunch stop we were all ready and raring to tackle Striding Edge. By the time were actually scrambling I think most of us were quite glad of the low cloud, as much as I’m sure the view would have been incredible, I think it would have made the whole thing a lot more terrifying, I already felt a little bit like I was part of the Lord of the Rings, on an epic quest! I was quite happy being blissfully unaware of how high up we really were!


A quick rest and refuel and some pictures were taken at the summit (or what we thought was the summit), before we quickly headed back down into the town, this time via Swirral Edge. By this point we were all expert scramblers and made it down in no time! Walking back down the path we had ascended on that morning, we were treated to the first view of what was actually around us, the beautiful scenery and the chance to actually dry out a bit cheered us all up for the final few kilometres back to the minibus.

The only thing left was the long minibus ride back to Nottingham, happily exhausted after a wonderful weekend away! 

 Ellie-Publicity Officer

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The RAMSOC Archive

Greetings from the RAMSOC Archivist! I’m Joanna, former Publicity Sec, hater of walking and lover of RAMSOC, and I have a secret. For the past year, I’ve been storing top secret RAMSOC files in my bedroom. This started as a well-intentioned but poorly executed plan for former kit monkey Charlotte and I to sort out through up to thirty years of paperwork that had been left in RAMSOC storage, but in the past 24 hours has become a true labour of love, in which I’ve finally done the sorting and made lots of exciting discoveries. What prompted this passion? I told President Peter he could get rid of them, so he threw all the folders in the nearest skip, and I regretted it so much that I crept after him and rescued them all (this is not strictly true – I’ve realised I’ve lost quite a lot from the 1980s under some bricks. I’m a fool.) Past committee members had painstakingly filed away every walk sheet and list of walkers from roughly 1999-2010, with the odd gap and a few pieces whi
Read more

An account of The Dark Peak Marathon, 2015

Image
Last year, I took part in the Dark Peak Marathon (DPM), an event Ramsoc runs every year where participants walk 24 or 37 miles around the peak district, seeing some of the best sights, from Mam Tor and Kinder, to Ladybower reservoir. This is a short account of my experience of the DPM. The early start was immediately worth it when we arrived at Ladybower Reservoir- the surrounding hills were picturesque in the early morning sun, and everyone was raring to go. The weather was forecast to remain like this for the whole day, adding to everyone’s excitement, however far they were walking (I was doing the 24 mile route). We were split into groups – so that every group had someone capable of reading a map and any necessary group kit. After a group photo over the Ladybower dam, everyone set out for a day of walking. The first hill was hardest of the day. Halfway up, I was questioning my sanity- why had I decided to do this, was I out of mind? I carried on thinking so before sudd
Read more