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Oh, we do like to be beside the lakeside

— Forget Arthur Ransome, William Wordsworth and that Ruskin bloke, it's time to get lyrical about our own Lakes experience.”

Sometimes, if you’re really sharp, you can make weekends feel like a full week’s holiday. That’s what J and I decided last night, back in the real world at Sheffield’s superlative Pasta Bar after a great weekend.

The Lake District is one of my favourite parts of the United Kingdom, and there ain’t too many of those. J and I met up with Louis and Marcia in Glenridding, a small village beside Ullswater and spent last weekend there.

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Ullswater

A grey afternoon in the Lake District, but thankfully no damp spirits.

Ullswater is just about far enough away, and different enough, to sweep up the ungainly mess of life in the twenty-first century.

An early start, fuelled by pastries and good conversation about relatives, friends and business, makes the M62-M61-M6 jaunt a breeze and J and I had evaded the worst excesses of the holiday traffic with plenty to spare.

Unless you approach the Lake District from the North – from Penrith, for example – Ullswater might not make it onto your itinerary when you’re faced with attractive honeypots such as Ambleside and Windermere. After all, to get to Ullswater you need to negotiate the Kirkstone Pass.

And the Pass, guardian and gateway of the North Lakes and host to the odd cycle race (organised by sadists), is actually one of the natural turnstiles that keeps Ullswater’s crowd levels in check.

That isn’t to say that traffic around the long lake is light. You can sail out to Norfolk Island and still offset your peace with the constant whir from the shoreline road.

Louis y Marcita had crossed the Pass at the beginning of last week, stopping off at Mike & J Towers for coffee and directions early on Monday morning.

Like most comely Dutch folk, Louis is one of those guys who knows how to enjoy nature and Marcia was always surrounded by it in her native Chile.

However, the ubiquitous English summer rain – admittedly much less common this year – threatened to test even the Tentmaster himself. On just one day during the week, fine weather presided over the young couple’s ascent to the unprecedented clear views from the summit of Helvellyn.

It was another damp morning when I arrived at the Gillside camping ground where the Tentmaster had chosen his ground like a keen-nosed bloodhound. Had not Marcia been standing beside the tent, I would have found them with much less ease for lack of mobile coverage and a tent different to the one I expected.

It seemed that Louis’ trusty old canvas effort – the sort of thing that kids brought up on iPods, PSPs and Lycra® would laugh at – had died just before its thirtieth birthday. Muttering about a lack of breathability caused by synthetic polyesters and the other obscure failings of modern fibre technology, Louis brushed his teeth with a frown, looking less like a bloodhound than a huffy Jack Russell.

J and I took a double kayak and Louis y Marcita a Canadian canoe at the Glenridding Sailing Centre. Even in their more cumbersome craft, Team Mono made Team Fincaso look a bit daft as J personally took on the role of repeatedly testing the diameter of our turning circle. Some related readers may well recall this unique function in J’s enormous repertoire of capabilities.

We beached, certain of us gratefully, and began to realise that we were getting sunburned even through the cloud cover that dogged us all day. Impervious to cold, Team Mono bathed in the icy waters of the lake, whilst J and I discussed with Louis the best approach for dealing with staff in subtropical call centres.

All this vigorous exercise could not be countenanced without adequate resort to the consumption of alcohol and once onshore again, we repaired to the Ratchers beer garden where Marcia became quite embarassingly intoxicated after only three hot chocolates.

Undoubtedly, all the exertion of paddling up and down the lake made us all somewhat tired, so we decided to snooze it off – Team Fincaso in their snug ensuite double room just two floors above the garden and Team Mono an uphill bridlepath hike away in their naff synthetic tent.

Up at the Traveller’s Rest that evening, the conversation continued with an eccentric blend of Spanish, English and Louis’ occasional, accidental use of Dutch. The wait for food was over an hour, so we retreated downhill once more to the beer garden.

Louis and J selected a bottle of wine, a Concha Y Toro whose journey to their palates had begun just down the road from Marcia’s house in Chile. I don’t like to mix drinks, so I had to stick to 1664, whose journey probably started somewhere like Burton-on-Trent.

One of the great joys of going on holiday for me is an opportunity to pig out a little on crap television, since normally I don’t watch TV. Unfortunately, the Glenridding Hotel didn’t offer MTV, so I had to make do with WWF on Sky Sports instead. Disappointing.

But isn’t it fascinating, the way none of the wrestling is actually real but all fake? Thousands of fans go to these events, millions watch on telly. Just how many think it’s all real, in a mass delusion exercise that borders on the excesses of those televangelist miracle healing events?

On Sunday, the clouds threatened again but not too seriously. We met up for a spot of brunch at Fellbites, the oddly-named cafe opposite Glenridding’s Tourist Information office. All too soon, it was time to head back to the real world, a world without hot chocolate, kayaks and wrestling.

We said goodbye to Team Mono, who still had their horrid new tent to pack away and set out for home, but not before J had quenched her thirst for ‘outdoorsy’ clothing back over the Pass in Ambleside.

Ullswater, I miss it already!