CONQUER THE LAKES
For 15 minutes, I’d been fighting my way through flooded forest to reach the shore of Rydal Water. It was raining so hard I could barely tell where the water ended and the air began. Far behind schedule, I was alone, rapidly losing the light and nearly out of phone battery.
“It had been tougher than we could have imagined, thanks to floods, ‘killer’ swans and blue-green algae”
Suddenly, I was thrown forward, plunging up to my neck in cold water. Something had tripped me: a branch hidden beneath the floodwaters. Warding off my rising panic, I recovered my balance and pushed on. A few minutes later – to my relief – I was rewarded, as the trees finally opened out to
