New horizons

It's been a short week having returned from Madrid on Monday but I managed a few runs to set me up for a long weekend in the mountains, or at least that was the plan.  I headed off into unchartered territory and instead of going north I went south, to the stunning Lake District.  On Friday I only needed to do a 6km run but managed to tweak my left hammy so after 3km it became a walk. It was in the same spot as when I ran the Ultra 125 X in Inverness but it hadn't given me any warning that it was still a problem.
As a result on Saturday I walked up Helvellyn and there were fantastic opportunities to run along the top and the descent would have been amazing.  But the hammy meant that wasn't possible.  What surprised me was there must have been over 100 people on the trail or the top of the mountain. The path up was good however in order to do a circular route you do have to do some technical scrambling.  This was probably the hardest scrambling I had done and I really had to put on my "big boy pants" as I do not have a head for heights and there were some precarious drops.
At one stage I was trying to find the best route and turned round only to find 10 people following me.  The blind leading the blind and I had a choice of two scary scrambles down the rocks and had to reverse back up the first one as I couldn't see how to get down.  
But when I reached the top you could have ran for miles across the tops of the mountains and I'd like to go back to see much more of the area.  The descent was equally fraught with scrambling but I come away more confident and perhaps might now try to tackle "threading the needle" on Ben Arthur (aka The Cobbler) with an experienced climber to assist.  According to an experienced climber the scrambling on Helvellyn was much harder than threading the needle so may be this summer I will.
Today I headed for another mountain to walk and I'm sure this will surprise you but I got lost.  Instead I ended up doing a forest walk and it was beautiful.  I think it was probably better for my hammy.  I ran the first few minutes but the pain was there so I settled for the walk.
The one downside of the Lake District is the number of people who are there which leads to very few parking places and slow traffic.  But it's so beautiful it really made for a memorable weekend.  I'll be back to continue expanding new horizons but next time will be better prepared with GPX files on my watch and OS maps.  It was exciting delving into the unknown but next time I will have researched the routes more thoroughly.  I can hear Michael Martin laughing already!  Finger crossed my amazing sports therapist Pamela will sort my hammy tomorrow as I can't afford time out with Romania only 73 days away!  A lot of work to be done on the mounts, in the gym and the heat chamber before then!