Englishmen from Manchester are pretty hard to understand because of their peculiar accent. At least that's what people say, and that's why I think that the guy was from Manchester: we were having a hard time trying to understand him when he was chatting me and Kat up in the hostel in Grasmere. But he was friendly enough and better entertainment than none.
He was a serious hiker - that's what he tried to make us believe. At some point however, he had to admit that he and his pals had their stuff transported, so no wonder that they were able to make more distance per day than we did. To be honest, that made me feel very superior, even though I didn't even carry all of my stuff myself, having put some of the stuff that I didn't need for hiking (such as dancing shoes...) in Ella's transported bag.
The guy from Manchester and his pals were walking the whole coast-to-coast path, and not all of them were entirely well prepared or informed. They stayed in hostels that usually provided bedding. At one point, though, they had to stay in cabins, and one of the pals didn't bring a sleeping bag. Have I mentioned that it gets quite chilly in May at night in the Lake District? So neither did he have a sleeping bag nor a blanket. What he did to survive the cold night is empty his backpack, wearing as many clothes as possible, including old socks on the hands as gloves, and crawl into his backpack which probably only covered parts of his legs. At this point of the story, with this image in mind, the guy from Manchester finally succeeded in making us laugh.
