Adventures under £100 (#1)
Two nights and three days of hiking in the Lake District: itinerary, costs and routes
With my assessment to become a qualified Mountain Leader coming up soon, I should really be spending every spare minute out in the fells with just my map and compass for company.
I suffered a total crisis of confidence during my ML training week last year, where I basically completely forgot I’d ever managed to keep myself alive on a mountain before, and I know the only answer is practice. Yet somehow the weeks keep slipping by and now my assessment is scarily close and I’m definitely not as well acquainted with contour lines as I should be.
In a bid to force myself to get on with it, I booked a mini adventure for myself last week: two nights and three days of solo mountain time, staying at a couple of YHAs and walking between them.
One drum I’ll never stop beating is that adventures don’t need to be big and complicated and expensive. Alarm bells always start ringing when I see people flogging trips that cost approximately three million pounds to sleep in a dorm with them for five nights with no guide or flights or evening meals included. You really don’t need to spend that much money to see that view.
I’m reluctant to say that the outdoors is free when in the next breath I’ll tell you that it’s a good idea to buy a decent waterproof coat, and I love visiting new far flung places when I can, but it is absolutely possible to have a really fun time outside for a relatively low price. That’s one of the big perks of choosing this hobby over, say, collecting art or race car driving or drinking really fancy whisky. (Presumably they’re all quite expensive pursuits? I’ve actually got no idea?)
With that in mind, this is the first post in what will be a new series of adventures under £100. Of course, you can always do things for less. Wild camp and eat noodles and you’ll spend a fraction of what I’ve outlined below. But hopefully this shows that even when you buy your snacks in M&S and eat out, you can still have a cheap(ish) and cheerful adventure.
You can see a full run down of what I spent at the end but the summary is: a whole minibreak for less than the price of one night in many very average hotels.
The plan
I wanted to do an A to B walk so that I had no option but to navigate my way there, and couldn’t talk myself into a shorter day walk.
If I’m looking for a budget break, YHA is always my go-to. A dorm bed is normally pretty affordable (if you can put up with a bit of snoring) and you can often get a good deal on a private room too, depending on when you travel. After half an hour of messing around on the YHA website and Komoot, I came up with this itinerary: