Is summer always this wet in England? (or, It rained again today!)

This morning we were up early to make the most of our time in this beautiful location. We started with a 3 mile wander along the Rothay, behind Rydal Hall and back into Ambleside. It was a lovely morning – cool, but the sun was (almost) shining and the dark clouds had moved on.

Back with a big appetite for breakfast, we then enjoyed the company of our hosts, George and Ann, before setting out for the day. We started with the Beatrix Potter Gallery in nearby Hawkshead. This tiny gallery is located in Beatrix’s husbands original solicitors office and displays originals of her pictures for a number of her stories. They are wonderful, the reproduction in the books is amazing – particularly considering a lot of the books were originally printed in the very early 1900’s.

From here it was a couple of miles down the road to Hill Top Farm, the first farm Beatrix Potter purchased with the proceeds from her books. It has a lovely little cottage – quite comfortable. The house is as it was left to the National Trust by Beatrix. She left a number of properties to the National Trust. As an avid conservationist, Beatrix purchased a number of large farms in the Lake District to preserve the area, and bequested them to the National Trust. Some of these are open, like Hill Top, and others are run as working farms.

A number of pieces of furtniture, and part of the house and landscape have been used in various books of Beatrix’s. The house has some of these books, with the relevant page open, to look at as you wander through – it is really interesting to see how it is incorporated and where the inspiration came from.

After Hill Top, we headed north to the Derwent Pencil Museum, which, in all honesty, was pretty boring! And then on to the Castlerigg Stone Circle. It was the Summer Solstice today, and Castlerigg Stone Circle is a particularly important place, so there were a lot of people there – many of which had been there all night, ready to celebrate the dawn at around 4:30am, and since that time had been celebrating and welcoming other visitors to the circle. The location was amazing, the views were really breathtaking.

We then wandered back through to Ambleside, and on to the Grizedale Forest. This had been advertised as a great place to walk, with wonderful sculptures along the forest trails. The forest is not what we expected – essentially it is mostly a pine plantation – but the walking track was pretty good. That was until it rained. We decided to tackle two walks – neither of them very long (1.5 miles and 3 miles) and it was as we set out on the 3 mile walk that the rain started – lightly at first, and then quite a bit stronger. So of the 4.5 miles we walked in total, it would have rained for about half! Luckily we had our rain jackets, but they only help so much!

We are beginning to wonder if they ever have sunny weather in the UK. Since we have been here, we have driven and walked through rain ourselves, other parts of the country have suffered from torrential downpours and flooding – are we going to see the sun at all before we head home for ‘winter’!

(Alison)

Lakes District

We had another long trip today from North Wales to the lakes district. The trip went quite quickly, and so we decided to detour into Blackpool, and to visit one of my dad’s (John) old homes. Blackpool was very interesting. After finding dad’s old house we drove down the promenade, and then headed for Levens Hall just south of Kendal.

The garden at Levens Hall was just as described in the Lonely Planet, “Like stepping into Alice in Wonderland”. The various hedges are cut into some quite amazing shapes. We spent a good amount of time wandering through the garden, enjoying the various sights.

From Levens Hall we travelled to Sizergh Castle, another large castle run by the National Trust. Approaching the castle we were confronted with a high, almost skyscraper, covered scaffolding. The castle was packed up for the wint… I mean summer. The castle was still open, just there was no view from the outside, other than that of the covers. The inside was interesting, and a talk on the roof restoration, the real reason for the covers, was also interesting.

Kendal was our next stop, a great little town with an equally great chocolate shop. We grabbed a quick cake and sandwich before walking around the town and then heading to Ambleside. After checking in, and carrying the bags up to the room, we decided to go for a walk. We had purchased a set of small walks around Ambleside, and the weather was looking ok. By the time we had chosen a walk there was a loud clap of thunder, and the skies opened up to… is it really summer? Fortunately within a few minutes the rain had passed and we headed off on the walk.

The walk went up past the Stock Ghyll waterfall, and then followed along some small lanes and public footpaths. We got a little lost at a few points, but in general it was a really good walk. We got a glimpse of a deer in the distance, and the waterfall was quite spectacular. At the end of the walk we were back in town, and grabbed a salad and some rolls from a shop before heading down to the lake for a quick picnic dinner.

(Andrew)