Lakes District and the Cumbrian Mountains

Wednesday 14th July 2010

If you've already had enough of my obsession with drystone walls then I suggest you log off now! It's about to get a whole lot worse...........

Today we planned to visit the Lakes District and although it was a very miserable morning, we stuck to the plan. Today was our last opportunity to go there and I have been tole how spectacular it is soooo many times, that I couldn't take the chance of missing something.

We had about an hour and a half drive on pretty much all freeway to get to our starting point, but the nearer we got to Cumbria, the more drystone walls we saw separating paddocks (fields). Unfortunately even after we got off the freeway there was nowhere to stop to have a closer look and take pictures (is that a collective sigh of relief I can hear? - yeah well - I'm not finished yet!)

We began at Windemere, which is the largest of all the lakes. We had to drive into to the village a little way to park and walk back to the Information Centre.
There were drystone walls everywhere, but not just the ones that pass for fences or borders, but entire buildings!!! Pubs, churches - you name it! Fabulous!!! This is the front door to a private home - it was very quaint and a good example of many of the buildings in the village.

This garden wall just stuck me as being quite pretty..... the top section is obviously new.

There is charming parkland at the edge of the lake and lots of ducks geese and swans. Ray bought food for them and became the "pied piper of waterbirds".

We elected to take a 40 minute cruise around Lake Windemere on the Miss Cumbrian IV.

There was a great deal to see. All very beautiful. The more southerly land around the lake is very steep and heavily forested, but as you go toward the north it is more gently sloping and grassy, with some stunning and no doubt very expensive real estate. This 'temple' below belongs to a private dwelling.

There are untold number of sailing boats moored everywhere. There were a couple of them out on the water and we couldn't help but compare to the kind of sailing here to that you would do on Sydney Harbour. So peaceful here.....

View to the south from the boat.

I was almost as taken with the boathouses as I was with the drystone - almost - but not quite. They are quite fascinating though as there seems to be no boat ramp, you simply steer your boat in and lock it up - like a garage!

We left Windemere via the car ferry across and drove towards Keswick. Saw some more of mother nature's wonders, dotted with mankind's additions, along the way. These small rapids were at Grassmere which is where William Wordsworth wrote much of his poetry. We had already passed through Beatrix Potter country.

As I desperately needed to visit the "little girl's room" we stopped at this pub. It was very nice and guess what? - the lower portion to the right of the arched doorway is......... you got it! - drystone.

The big surprise in this pub though, was actually the "little girls' room". Obviously a recent addition (more likely than a renovation it deserved to have it's photo taken.

We kept on towards Keswick with a one or two (or maybe more) photo stops on the way.

And yet more drystone walls with mountain backdrops!

If you squint hard you can see a waterfall running down between these hills. The weather is actually unusually dry here at the moment, in spite of today's weather (some areas, quite near here, even have 'hosepipe' bans in place), so we wished we could have seen this after a good rain.

We headed back to Billinge through torrential rain, grateful that it had held off long enough for a wonderful day out.