The week after Easter went down to Kent again to stay with Tim's parents for a few days.  We had to renew some passports so we had a day in London.  An April day which, I must note, was characterized by a continuous snowfall.  It was unbelievable, and unbelievably cold, again!  After we got the passports, we went to the British museum to see a special exhibit about Pompeii.  It was an incredible exhibit.  The curators of the museum were able to get some of the best items from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and some were items of which I have seen pictures since I was a girl.  They had a a political advertisement endorsing someone running for office, and lots of mosaics, statues and frescoes.  There was also quite a bit of wood furniture that was preserved in Herculaneum.  What caught my attention though, as always, was the food!  There was a carbonated loaf of bread, carbonated figs and carbonated pomegranates. There were glass bottles of olive oil, with the oil still inside.  There were also lots of cooking pans that were very illuminating, such as one in the shape of a rabbit. 

     The most moving part of the exhibit was the plaster casts of some of the people that were caught in the volcano.  Their images were perfectly preserved - a woman laying down, a man who was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest up against a wall, and a family of a husband and wife and two little children, with the baby still on the mother's lap as they all frantically tried to escape the ash and lava. 

     And the kids?  Well, I think they will remember it, at least.  There were some bad attitudes, it is true, but I tried to infect them with my enthusiasm:  'Hey, hey, look at this!  Isn't this fascinating?'  That kind of stuff.  I don't regret taking them.

     Then the next week - yes, we are still on the Easter holidays - we went on an unforgettable camping trip to the Lake District with our friends, Caden and Rebecca Stiles and their children, Chloe, Duncan and Winston.  Caden was determined to climb Scafel Pike, the highest, umm, peak (not to be confused with a mountain) in England.  That was a good thing, because I love the Lake District, and I know my husband loves me, but not in a way that would motivate him to spend money on a campsite.  No, the only thing could motivate him to do that would be the encouragement of another male.  So, urged on by Caden, we came to conquer Scafel.

     So, one problem was, as mentioned previously, it was a very cold winter, and the cold winter was turning into a very cold spring.  And we were camping!  The Stiles changed their minds at the last minute and upgraded from a mere tent to a heated 'pod' at the campsite.  And although the thought of Caden motivated Tim to go camping, it didn't actually motivate him to go that step further and do something sensible like get a heated place to stay.  When we got to the campsite in the evening, it was cold and windy.  We had to cook dinner, so we set up the gas cooker and tried to brown the hamburger, but it was so windy that the wind was just blowing away all the heat and the pan wouldn't heat up.  

 

 

Finally the Stiles let us use their infinitely more powerful gas cooker, and we finally got it heated up enough that it was safe to eat.  While I struggled to feed the family, Tim set up the tent and the kids ran around the campsite.

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

Soon we went to bed, but I don't think I've had a worse night, other than suffering through labor.  It got to -4, which I assume is Celsius.  I was already freezing before I got into bed, so I just  put on tons of layers:  two shirts, a sweater, my coat, a hat.  So, my upper body was OK, but I only put on one pair of socks, and my cold feet kept waking me up every 20 min.  It was torture!  But when we work up in the morning, it was the most beautiful day you could imagine.  It was frosty and sunny without a cloud in the sky.  We had a fabulous view of Scafell:

 

 

We started soon after breakfast with everyone but Verity, who stayed behind with Rebecca and their youngest son Winston.  Here is our mountain goat Eleanor, who, instead of climbing the mountain in a straight line, was so excited that she kept zigzagging over the trail:

 Samuel and Duncan hung out together along the trail:

And Abigail and Imogen egged each other on in their respective miseries, stopping every three minutes and complaining pretty much the whole way, until we got so far up the trail that they finally accepted their fate.

Quite soon into the hike there were significant stretches of snow.

After a while we got to an area of huge boulders, and we stopped and had lunch there.  Then we started on our way again, with this terrain ahead of us:

Finally we got to a 'saddle', which is a connecting area between two peaks.  The views were incredible! 

From here we were pretty much past the snow line, and it was all uphill to the top.

Incredibly, Eleanor the six year old was the first one to reach the top of Scafell!  She never complained the whole way up, but it turns out that the shoes she was wearing on the hike were too small for her and a few days later she lost her big toenail!  Here are the Stiles at the top:

And here we are, with, miraculously, genuine smiles.  It was windy at the top, but sunny.

The view at the top was breathtaking.  All the effort put into climbing to the top is rewarded by these wonderful sights.

Then it was time to go down.  The kids took advantage of the snow and slid down on their bottoms.

Once we got down further we could see where we had been and appreciate much better exactly what was up there.

As if that wasn't enough, we went on another major hike the next day.  This one was different in that we hiked up a valley, following a river.

When we got nearer the top, we ran again into some very deep snow, but also some beautiful views.

When we got to the top, it started snowing!  And we found a rather disconcerting piece of equipment:

The next day we packed up our tents and headed back to civilization, but I had mixed feelings about leaving such a remote and beautiful place.  I promised the kids - and myself - that before we went home we would stop by Grasmere, one of my most favorite places in all the world.  We had to go to the Grasmere gingerbread shop:

And here is Georgie in front of the river, which runs beside an ancient Christian church, as well as Wordsworth's grave.

There is something really special, even magical about Grasmere and the Lake District.  Unfortunately I don't think I can explain it.  But it is the sort of place that, when I go, I never want to leave.