Carlisle & District Rambling & Fellwalking Club
Walk & Event Reports
Sunday 27th July 2014
B Walk
Ambleside to Coniston
10 Miles Grade 3
Leader: Graham Bell
Report by John McKay
Photos by John McKay & Alan Holder
A beautiful morning with thirty nine of us on the coach to the Coniston area. On the way Heather passed round her plea for walk leaders for the winter programme, a few more walks were added but not enough, where are you all ?, do your bit for the club.
Nineteen of us alighted in Ambleside for the B walk and headed off immediately for the usual convenience stop. Suitably relieved we set off through the park heading for Skelwith Bridge. It was beautiful country and the views along the way were brilliant. Along the way we visited some lovely waterfalls and we sat down for lunch at a lovely spot basking in the sunshine. Over lunch we discussed the merits of solicitors, it was a very short discussion. The discussion on what a useless bunch of incompetent money grabbing gits (censored) they were, lasted much longer. No doubt there are many very competent, caring and useful solicitors out there somewhere but,in general, they do seem to have a bad image. We set off after lunch and arrived at Tarn Howes and the lovely sight of the ice cream van, we all sat around , saying little, we were too busy licking our ice cream. We finally arrived in Coniston, where we split up, with some heading for the pub and others for the coffee shop. During this final section we were told the story of "Billy the Budgie". The Great Aunt of one of our members died leaving a considerable amount of money. A condition of the will was that a sufficient amount be set aside to allow her pet budgie to live out his life in luxury.The problem was that no legal definition of a luxury budgie life existed. Should he have a huge cage, male or female companions, depending on his inclination, annual holidays, the Canary Islands perhaps, nobody knew. It took several years to sort out and made legal history. He was finally awarded the staggering sum of £50,000 but the shock was too much for him and he died two weeks later. A great story with a great ending. We sat around for quite a while in Coniston as the A party were missing. They finally arrived, later than expected, having experienced some tougher sections on the walk than anticipated. We set off from Coniston, for the journey back to Carlisle, after a wonderful day’s walking. Thank you to everyone who came along, especially Graham for leading.
John
