Community Camping Trip in the Lake District

   Over our week of Half-Term Break, we decided we were going to take a community camping trip up to the Lake District, one of the most beautiful parts of England.  We all wanted to use our last real chance to take a trip together but didn’t want to do anything too expensive.  So 14 of us piled into 3 rental cars and drove the 4 hours up north to a little village called Windemere, next to Kendall.  We’d paid for 3 nights at a camping barn. Sounds dodgy, I know, but it was one of the coolest places I’ve ever stayed. It was an old barn converted into a camping lodge(which I guess is a common thing to do in England?) and it was nestled in right on the side of a huge hill. As you entered through the big barn doors, there was a main sitting room: a few couches and chairs on one side and a big floor space for all the little mattresses on the other side.  Keep walking in and up to the right, there was a few steps into what I called the “Bunk Room”(which I learned isn’t quite a common term in everyone’s vocabulary) with 3 bunk beds and a skylight!  Next to the Bunk Room, a straight shot back from the barn door, was the kitchen.  I thought it was a fabulous kitchen, considering the only stove/oven/anything else I've ever had for cooking has been a campfire. However, to the typical English camper, it wasn’t quite, how shall I say...up to par? One tiny sink, just enough to fit a pot in to wash, sat in the stone counter.  The fridge was a true English fridge…tiny.  (Think dorm fridge, one stacked on top of another) The oven was just big enough to fit one pan in, and the stove was rather entertaining to try to light(even more entertaining to try to get it to stay lit).  The cutlery and utensils was mix-and-match, to the extreme. To me it just made it that much more exciting to try to cook anything successfully.   “Whoever finds a knife sharper than a butter knife first, wins!”  I’d say the cooking was one of the most interesting parts of the whole camping experience.  Cooking for 14 people, in a tiny kitchen, on a small budget isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done but it was oh-so-worth it. 

Our barn

    The drive there ended up taking a bit longer than we expected but no one seemed to mind because we were all quite excited for a giant road trip together. Amelia, Erik, and Jess drove (I was going to but decided my manual driving skills aren’t quite up to snuff for English driving, and with a full car of volunteers) which was quite entertaining as none of them had driven since August, and Amelia and Erik had never tried driving on the left side of the road before(roundabouts, what!?).  So after we arrived safe and sound (only a few wrong turns to count), we unloaded the cars, set up our beds, and Seo-Yeon, our South Korean, set to cooking right away. She made us some authentic Korean food including some sushi rolls, some sushi rolls minus the sushi plus more vegetables, and a beef dish that was absolutely brilliant.   After we ate our weight in rice and vegetables, we did nothing but sit and talk. I enjoyed every minute of it.  There’s been so many times I’ve wanted to just sit and hang out with community but it seems there’s always jobs to do, places to go, young people to tend to (which is important, indeed). As we sat and conversed, I realized just how fast this year has gone, how much I’ve learned, and just how much I have come to love our community and everything about it.

  After awhile people started getting a bit antsy so we played what might possibly be one of the best games ever invented, called “No Holds Barred.” I’m not sure how easy it would be to explain here, so let’s just say it’s the kind of game I could see my brothers playing.  Though the severity of the war wounds was minimal, the number of bruises was abundant.

   Our first full day, Amelia took a group with her to hike a trail she’d found on the map and was determined to conquer.  The rest of us took our time getting out of bed and enjoyed a morning of relaxation on the sea of mattresses that had replaced the floor, sleeping bags and pillows scattered everywhere.  After about 12:30 pm we decided we should make the most out of our holiday instead of sleeping it away so we packed some sandwiches and filled our water bottles and headed out for Kentmere Reservoir, a place Jess had found on the map and decided it looked like a nice friendly route for an afternoon jaunt.  We set out with the agreement that we’d walk for an hour or two and however far we’d gotten by then, we’d just turn around and come back.  We hadn’t even made it to the bottom of our hill and we’d met these two older ladies sitting on a pile of rocks, studying their map and eating oranges. Since they had a map (and we didn’t)  I thought I’d ask them about the route, just to be on the safe side(I've learned the hard way that Jess isn't always the best with directions).  They assured us it was a lovely stroll, with the loop up and around the reservoir totaling 6 miles and we’d be just fine if we followed the signs the whole way. 

   Well, after an interesting encounter with a field full of sheep, a semi-treacherous crossing of a swampy pasture, passing a few abandoned yet beautiful buildings, several instances of “It’s gotta be  just over this ridge,” and about 3 hours later…we finally made it to the reservoir.  Though Jess and I were a bit disappointed it wasn’t exactly fit for swimming conditions (the strong gale winds would’ve made it a tish nippy), it was still an incredibly beautiful view from the top.  I have to say, I was fully enjoying myself as I have been yearning for some outdoor excursions like such all year, however, I think I was among the minority.  Everyone was pretty convinced the two ladies had miscalculated the length of the route but I think they were pretty close. It just seemed to last a bit longer with all the breaks we kept taking. As we started back down to our barn, I got a few rolled eyes when I was trying to spark some positivity and said, “Well, at least it’s all downhill from here.” 

Kentmere Reservoir~We made it!

  As soon as we got back, some of us jumped in the car and headed into the village to find a grocery store to get food for the evening.  It was the Americans’ night to cook and we decided we’d go BBQ style with hamburgers, crisps(chips), and vegetables with Ranch(which is usually impossible to buy in this country but we were lucky enough to find a small bottle at the store-we couldn’t believe our eyes!). After some serious frustration with the little disposable BBQ grills we’d bought, we ended up cooking our burgers on the stove inside. They still tasted amazing, seems everyone was impressed with our grill skills.  The night continued with more games and more chat, it was about 2 am when we finally turned in.

   The next day, Amelia and her gang left on another hike while most of us decided to have a lie-in(sleep in) and just take it easy.  About 3 pm, I decided to go for a run through the tiny village of Windemere.  The village was so cute, but the huge hills, however, were not so cute.  I ran to the top of one of the hills we’d hiked over the day before and as I looked down over the valley, the misty fog was hanging in the air so heavily.  The low clouds were sitting on top of the little cottages and the one church, it looked like a scene from a movie. It was another one of those moments where I had to stop and say to myself, “Wow. You definitely are in England.”  It gave me goosebumps.   I wish I could’ve captured the sight in pictures(I actually ran to the barn and back with my camera so I could try) but no photo would ever do it justice.  Another lesson I’ve learned this year: just stop. Enjoy the moment while you have it.

   That night we had one of the most entertaining meals that will definitely stay among my favorite memories of the year.  Hannah, one of our program leaders, decided it would be fun for the staff to host a “Mystery Dinner” for us volunteers.  I think I was more excited than most the others when she told us the theme and which character we’d be playing.  It was “Murder at Cactus Creek” and it took place in Texas. Yeehaw!!  If you’ve never done a mystery dinner,  imagine a  more in-depth version of the board game Clue: everyone gets dressed up and gets a script to read out and the challenge is to figure out who the murderer is as the story unfolds.  The 3 program leaders cooked a 3-course fajita meal for us- it was fabulous!  I was quite impressed with how much everyone else got into the whole thing, they all brought costumes and everything!  My character was Honey Pott, "Cowgirl whose Daddy is one of the richest landowners. Likes to think she's a crack shot and as good as any man. Wears cowboy boots and a big white Stetson perched on her blonde curls and a gun tucked into her garter."  Though I didn't have a big white Stetson(or a garter) I did have my Fatbaby cowboy boots that I wore with jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.  I think the others enjoyed it so much because they were acting out a lifestyle that was so different than they were used to whereas I loved it because I felt like I was back in the mountains of Wyoming, where I worked for 2 summers on the wagon train.  I also enjoyed it because I, or rather, Honey Pott, turned out to be the “murderer”. 

  After dinner, we all seemed to crash as we knew we’d have to be up and ready to leave by 10 am the next day.  So as Thursday morning came, everyone was running around trying to put everything back together(it’s amazing how much damage 14 people can do in 4 days) and we were waving goodbye to the sheep by 10:30.  

Blackpool Beach

   We decided that we’d make the most of our trip so instead of driving straight back to SPEC, we stopped off in Blackpool for a few hours.  It turned out to be the perfect ending of our wonderful adventure together.  Blackpool is famous for its Winter Gardens, Empress Ballroom, and Pleasure Beach Amusement Park.  It was a perfectly sunny day for exploring the beach and the piers though the tide was a bit high so we couldn’t do much swimming.  One of my highlights was going to the amusement park, which was literally right across the street from the beach, with Jess and Anthony.  Anthony is a 22-year old Zimbabwean and he'd never been on a roller coaster before so we decided it was time for him to experience the thrill.  Let’s just say for a  guy who has such a deep bass voice, he can scream pretty loud…and high.  We had a good laugh about it afterwards. 

4 pm rolled around and we decided it was time to head back so our caravan took off for the last leg of the journey and we returned back to SPEC by about 7:30 that night.

  Everyone was at the “exhausted-but-still-on-a-high-from-the-exhilaration-of-the past-four-days” stage so soon after returning, everyone dispersed and crashed.  As I laid in my bed that night, looking at the stars out my window, I couldn’t help but think how incredibly blessed I am to be a part of such a beautiful community.  The people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, and the things I’ve learned this year have made such an impression on my heart; these are the memories that will last forever.
 

I thank God for blessing me with such an abundant life.