Lakes and monsters

Holidaying with children goes through four phases. The first is when they are too young to voice an opinion on where you go or what you do. This is bliss, though not as much bliss as not having the little bundles of joy along in the first place.

The second is when you surrender your choices for theirs - the years of buckets and spades, theme parks, theme restaurants, Disney and Centreparcs. A chance for the adults to have a horrible time, and generally get in their revenge early for phase three.

For phase three is when the children will complain loudly that they are having the horrible-est time. Ever. In the whole history of horrible.

These are the years when you try to assert yourself and your adult tastes, in the inevitably futile hope of interesting them in things that you like, so you might begin to edge tentatively towards that great unreachable goal - the family holiday in which there is something to please everyone.

The fourth is that merciful stage when they refuse to come on your sad holidays in any case.

We are at phase three. Indeed, we seem to have been stuck at phase three for some time. Possibly for ever.

We decided to introduce our 12 and nine-year-olds to the Lake District, of which we had fond memories from a time BC - Before Children.

We would go cycling, we told them, on peaceful lanes and remote bridle paths, we would scramble up the fells for the exhilaration of hours spent walking on top of the world, from lake to shining lake.

And they replied: No we won't.

The north western corner of the Lake District has always been our favourite spot. You are off the main tourist drag that grinds from Windermere to Keswick. You have, in Loweswater, Crummock Water and Buttermere, three of the most peaceful lakes. And in Cockermouth, which sits at the head of the Vale of Lorton and just outside the boundary of the National Park, a real Cumbrian market town where farming is still more important that tourism.

We decided to break the children in gently. For our first cycle ride I took the two of them on an easy seven mile glide down from Cockermouth to Loweswater.

Swooping down the valley, with the green hills rising to enclose us as we approached the lake, it was not a bad introduction. But the ride was not without interruption. There were halts for water. For the removal of sweatshirts. For the replacement of sweatshirts. For the removal of helmets to facilitate the scratching of heads. For the adjusting of helmets which had not been replaced correctly by father but had instead been jammed back on, trapping ears.

Then came a standoff, when an alleged asthma attack had the 12-year-old wheezing most effectively at the top of a gentle incline. But it wasn't asthma. It was just breathlessness. Something today's sedentary child is entirely unfamiliar with.

But it was the incident of The Spider On The Handlebars that made me abandon the softly-softly approach.

Squealing in terror, the arachnophobe nine-year old released his hold on his bike, veered into the hedge and went flying off, narrowly missing a Larry Grayson lookalike who was busy dusting his gate.

Lookalike-Larry was entirely in sympathy with the children's perception of this as a crisis, and for his benefit I was solicitous. But I decided that from now on it would be No More Mr Nice Dad.

Next day we tried a hike, from Buttermere, around Crummock Water and striding up the fell-side to the spectacular 170 ft waterfall of Scale Force. It was a tough walk over rough and boggy ground, chosen to really give them something to moan about.

Perversely, they loved it.

They enjoyed it most when the path petered out, the ground became boggy, and there was much teetering on rocks and stumbling through marsh, with several bootfulls each of black, brackish water.

Each hardship brought squeals of delight - the greatest coming when I fell over.

Scale Force was a fitting destination. Clambering up the bed of the stream they cooled their hot heads beneath the plummeting torrent of white water, and watched a kamikaze sheep high above them, as it reached ever further over the abyss for the succulent leaves of a scrub oak.

On the way back the children announced that walks were OK as long as they were over bogs, and if I fell in at least once.

In that case, I announced, tomorrow we would try mountain climbing.

OK, at 2,159ft Whiteless Pike is not exactly Everest. But it looked like it to the children, as we set off from the shores of Crummock Water and they had to tilt their heads way back to look up to its pyramid peak.

When we hit the relentlessly-rising ridge there were complaints. But it was no good asking for food or water, because we had purposely left every form of sustenance in the car. There might be treats, but later, and they would have to be earned.

The children found the climb tough, as anyone but the superfit would. But each time they stopped and turned to look back, they found the view got better and better, and the sense of achievement grew. They most enjoyed the bits of steep exposed rock which had to be tackled with hands as well as feet.

There was one protest, however, when the puffing 12-year-old asked:

"What's the number of that emergency hot line?"

Assuming she was harking back to the threats she used to issue, when she felt we were being particularly harsh, to report us to Esther Rantzen I said:

"What, Childline?"

"No," she said, "NHS Direct."

Presumably the complaint would have been "My parents are making me climb a mountain and I think the effort will kill me."

But, fortuitously, mobile phones do not work in this corner of the Lake District, so she was denied any hope of outside assistance.

Things went swimmingly once the children treated the climb as a game, adapting one of their favourite ways of making a journey pass - laughing at people in other cars - to laughing at other walkers. There was plenty of scope. With their nobbly white knees, billowing shorts, beany hats and prawn-pink complexions, fell walkers are not exactly sex on legs.

And as they climbed towards the summit, they began to savour their achievement, delighted to find they could look way across to the Irish Sea to the west and to Keswick and Derwent Water to the east.

Indeed, looking down on the lane that winds up from Buttermere and through the pass at Newlauds Haus before dipping down to Derwent Water, they were indignant to see that it was possible to park there, at an altitude of over 1,000ft, and gain the fell tops with far less exertion than it had taken us to get there.

When we reached the top, I was convinced we had a pair of Lake District converts. They seemed to relish, as we squatted on this natural roof terrace, the deep satisfaction of having conquered a summit. And the descent - performed on their backsides, skimming over the soft springy grass - seemed to bring them unalloyed joy.

So much so that, in a sudden surfeit of optimism I said: "Maybe in 25 years you'll bring your children here."

They gave my pitying looks as they slid past.

"Nah" they said in unison.