Derwent water island
A lazy summer in 2002 my mates and I decided to go camping on one of the islands on Derwent Water, which is the lake next to Keswick in the Cumbrian lake district. We were quite a adventurous group as we all met in air cadets (Sounds sad but we got to shoot rifles and we even got to do aerobatics in a little 2 seater plane at RAF Leeming).

Any how we all set off in two cars and arrived at a small marina on the lake that my mate Stu had been working at over the summer. The plan was to take his parents small yacht (we are not posh honest!) and have a leisurely sail over to one of the islands then set up camp. The only problem was my mate had forgotten the keys for said yacht. While we were thinking ‘oh shit’ Stu had the brain wave of borrowing one of the small wooden dinghies which had a tiny onboard motor but could only carry about 3 people at a time. Not too bad, we would just make a few trips and hopefully be across before it got too late.

My self, my mate Dan with Stu driving set sail across the lake in the dinghy, all was going well until about ¾ of the way across when I realised the dinghy was rapidly taking on water and conveyed my findings to captain Stu who explained the good news that its not water but in fact petrol from the onboard that was filling up the bathtub like craft. Cue panic - if the dinghy managed not to explode it didn’t look like we would make it back, especially with the lack of oars on board.

Luckily we managed to drift the rest of the way to the island and made it to dry land, random luck would have it some guy was sailing past and Stu shouted, asking him for a tow back to the marina. Stu got the tow back and left me and Dan on the island.

Not too bad we thought, setting up the BBQ on the ‘beach’ part and cracking open a beer. An hour or two past and the light was fading quick. We spotted a small dot on the horizon which turned out to be my mate and the repaired dinghy (we found out later it was a simple task of duct taping a split petrol pipe on the engine and the minimum amount of petrol you can buy at a garage is exactly one sprite bottle full).

Accompanying him were our FOUR other mates, the bags we couldn’t fit in the first time, a crate of beer and my mates dog. I am pretty sure the edge of the dinghy was flush with the water and how the hell it didn’t sink with that much weight I will never know.

The sun had just about set at this point, so we finished off what was left of the BBQ and headed inland to set up camp. The middle of the island was very very dark and full of daddy long legs for some reason: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly

We set the tents up, build a huge fire, and proceeded to get stupidly drunk/stoned while making a lot of noise.
At about 4 in the morning I see a ghostly figure in the trees coming towards us but pass it off as a side effect of the intoxicants I had been consuming, well that was until the ghostly figure scared the crap out of me by being very much real, very much telling us to be quite and very much being a ‘God camp leader’ who had taken his troop for some nice wholesome camping on what they thought was a deserted island in a picturesque part of the lake district.

We decided to get some sleep at the point and just as we got into the tents the heavens opened and a thunderstorm started, which set my mates dog off into howl mode which it did for the rest of the night.

In the morning we got up and quickly realised the kids from the Christian camp had bivvy bagged (sleeping without a tent in an individual canvass condom type thing) right behind large fallen tree next to our camp. The poor kids had got no sleep because they had been too busy shitting themselves as to who the fuck we were and what we were doing (remember they thought they had this island to themselves that night), it was only chance that one of the leaders had come from the other side of the island at 4 in the morning to check on the kids, then heard us and told us to quieten down.

So that’s the best camping trip I ever had.

I’m new so be gentle,

Length – very long but thankfully not that wet.
(pandaparty, Thu 29 Mar 2012, 20:41, 1 reply)

Welcome
Have a *click* :)
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Thu 29 Mar 2012, 22:34, closed)