Hi there!
Part 2 of the ramble I took some years ago around the North of England/Scotland. Enjoy!
Hiking in The Lake District has been our our 'to do list' for years. So when we finally came round to travelling to Windermere in May of 2013, my son Wibe and I were looking forward to it enormously.
We weren't sad to leave grubby Norwich, and the weather helped by being cold but dry. The train didn't run this Sunday, and we were herded into a bus to take us to Peterborough, which was soon filled to capacity by burly men having to travel up to Scotland.
Our destination was Windermere, which we would reach by train from Peterborough, via Leeds, Carlisle, and Oxenholme.
We only had to wait 10 minutes for the fast train to Leeds, and saw the landscape slowly but surely change. Green it was, and green it stayed, but it became more and more unkempt and rough at the edges.
In Leeds we nearly made a huge mistake by boarding the train to London, which arrived at the Carlisle platform only minutes before our train without anyone announcing anything. It was our sheer luck that we overheard two women talking, and quickly jumped out again.
Whilst Wibe dozed (he always falls asleep on trains) and the cheerful hubbub of the British voices around me faded to a background buzz, I was glued to the window. The hills became higher and wilder, and the only living things I saw were thousands of weathered sheep and one large bird of prey.
The train passed small grey slated villages, and there was snow on the highest peaks. And dozens of waterfalls splashed down into brooks and burns. Sometimes we went into a tunnel, only to speed out of it into thick mist, and then going into the next tunnel and coming out of it into bright daylight again.
It was absolutely gorgeous. We travelled over brick arched bridges, spanning deep valleys, and I expected Voldemort to attack any minute.
At Carlisle we barely had time for a wee and a cup of much needed coffee in the quaint restaurant before we needed to be on the train to Oxenholme. And there we had to change trains yet again, this making it the 9th hour of our rail journey. By the time we reached Windermere, we were terribly tired.
We walked downhill from Windermere Station, and entered the first hotel we saw, The Queen's Hotel, hoping they had B&B facilities. The bar was hopping with animated punters, and the barman burst out laughing when I asked him for a room.
'We don't do rooms, love'. But...it says 'hotel' on your front?
'Yeah, funny that, I can't understand why that sign is up there. Try a bit further down the road, there's B&Bs there.'
We saw a B&B in a tiny Victorian House which appealed to us, Lingmoor Guest House, and were welcomed by Paula, who turned out to be a wonderful hostess.
The next day we took a bus to Derwent Water, and walked for hours and hours along that lake, and Grasmere Lake, and Rydal Lake back to Windermere Lake, meeting lambs and sheep and old ladies who rushed up hills with their walking sticks and small pooches.
But that's another story. I have provided you with a link to The Lake District from Above
