Windermere is the End of the Line

The lake district is where the English go to vacation. There were more English than foreign tourists. It’s an untypical area by US standards. It’s a tourist town with lots of people having a good time. It’s a national park on government owned land. It’s also a national park on privately owned land. Many of the trails we walked were through farmers’ sheep fields. It’s a busy town (actually, two towns). It’s also a very rural area with very small hamlets and extremely low population density. All of this is an within easy walk.

The two tourist towns are Bowness, on the lake, and Windermere, 2 miles north and up the hill. The train station is in Windermere. Our guest house was half way between the two towns. The location was fine, because we ended up in both towns every day. The lake is the largest in the UK, but it’s only about 1/3 the size of the largest of the Finger Lakes — 10 miles long by 1 mile wide.

Saturday, June 14

The trip involved 3 trains and a walk across Burmingham from one train station to another. The walk was through heavy traffic and the way was not marked very well, but we made it on time. The toilet on our second train was astounding. I stepped into a comfortably large room with a circular door. There was no handle or lock on the door. Instead, I had to find a panel with three round buttons on the opposite wall. Each button was encircled with a light. The top button closed the door. Once the door was closed, the top button changed from green to red, and the bottom two buttons turned green. The next button down locked the door. Locking the door turned the lock button red and left the bottom button, used to open the door, green. Because I didn’t lock the door quickly enough, a pleasant but disembodied female voice warned that the door is not locked. Having mastered that, I turned my attention to the toilet. About that time, I heard the disembodied woman announce a list of things I should not flush down the toilet. There were the items I expected to hear, plus many more, such as “old cell phones”, “junk mail”, “unpaid bills”, and “your ex’s cardigan”.

We arrived in Windermere on time late in the afternoon. We checked in and walked around to get our bearings. We visited the National Parks information booth and bought a pamphlet of 5 self-guided walks. These were listed by type, the types being “superb”, “wonderful”, “perfect”, “truly excellent”, and “magnificent”. We chose the first three. The first walk involved taking a ferry across the lake, so we stumbled around until we found the ferry. Since we were in Bowness, we ate at one of the restaurants near the lake. We had a wonderful dinner, but they aren’t big on veggies.

Sunday, June 15

I was going crazy. The room had no room. There was one folding wooden chair, but no practical way to unfold it and sit in it. In the US, bed and breakfasts typically offer a sitting room. This makes it easy for one of us to read while the other one sleeps or bustles around the room. None of the guest houses we stayed at in England offer this. I went down to the dining room, just so I could sit down in a chair to read. The owner explained that we had selected an economy room. We could have a much nicer room for a small upgrade fee. Fortunately, this was Sunday, which meant that  lot of people were checking out. We took the upgrade without even seeing the room. When we got in the room late in the afternoon, we found the upgrade to be a bargain. The room was twice a big. There were two comfortable chairs, with plenty of space to use them. Even the shower was larger.

Country Lane

The weather was cloudy with a few showers, but it never rained while we were outside. This was the day of our longest walk. The official walk is a little over 6  miles, but leaving from our guest house, it was 8 or 9 miles overall. (That’s nothing compared to what Dani will be doing, but it is significant for us.) We were equipped, not stripped; with rain gear, cool weather gear, warm weather gear, a GPS (for breadcrumbs, in case we got totally lost), day packs, water bottles, walking sticks — the works. The locals just walk. They may have the better idea. The ferry was quite interesting. It doesn’t have a propeller or a rudder. Instead, they have two steel cables that lay at the bottom of the lake. The cables wrap around a large wheel on either side of the ferry. The ferry pulls itself across the lake by turning the cable wheels. The walk was through a very rural area. The most populated section we traversed was a hamlet with a hand full of houses and a country church. The fields were beautiful. When we got back we wanted to check the times for the laundromat, so we walked up to Windermere to get the times off the door. Then we went to “Lazy Daisy’s” for a very good dinner and a killer desert.

Monday, June 16

Wild Flowers

We started the day by walking up to the laundromat in Windermere with our dirty laundry, then down to Bowness. We combined a lake boat ride with a visit to the local motor museum. The museum wasn’t expensive, but it was a bit of a disapointment. About half the exhibits were motorcycles, the other half cars. When I was young, I owned several English cars and knew a bunch of guys who owned other English cars. None of the cars I was familiar with were on display. The only iconic car on display was a Delorean. There were no Rolls Royces, no Jaguar X-types, no Austin-Healey anythings (although there were a couple of Austins). No Astin-Martins, or Mercedes. Nothing from the era of very long hoods and external manifold pipes. There were a few very early cars of the type that were gasolene engines mounted to modified horse carts, but nothing of historical significance. We had a nice time anyway, and the lake cruise was very nice.

Windermere Tea

We got back from the tour before the laundry was ready. We hadn’t had an English afternoon tea yet, and there were plenty of little cafes that would help us check that off the list. We picked one that looked promising. The owner came by with a long story that he was out of scones because a large Japanese group had come by for afternoon tea in the morning. (Gasp!)  It turns out he meant he had no proper scones (with raisins). He had plenty of cheese scones, which were perfectly fine with us, just so long as he had the cream, jam and butter. I took a picture of our Tea, in honor of the Japanese connection (the Japanese were fond of taking pictures of their meals). Danita went conventional and drank tea. I wanted a large espresso. The owner cheerfully told me there were no restrictions on the tea, I was free to have anything I wanted. So I had what I wanted. After that, it was time to walk up to Windermere to collect the laundry. The restaurant we picked for dinner was closed on Mondays, so we plunked ourselves and our laundry down at an Italian Bistro next door, and had some very good pizza for dinner.

View from the Top

After we ate and dropped the laundry off at our room, it was time for the hike. There is good daylight until after 9:30, so we could take a late hike. We took a climb up a local hill to get a breathtaking 360-degree view of the area. I wanted to get more pictures, but my phone battery was all petered out. I was able to get one quick pic. Then I had to content myself with looking at the landscape. We got back to the hotel a little after 9. We fell asleep pretty quickly.

Tuesday, June 17

Sunrise

It was the day to travel to Edinburgh, but the train didn’t leave until 1. We woke up early (before 4:30). There was already plenty of daylight, so we took a pre-breakfast hike around the lake area. We watched the sunrise over the lake and saw some wonderful areas. If you want to see beautiful countryside, I know some places to go. Now I know one more. We got back so early that we both had showers, did some of our packing, and were still too early for the 8:30 breakfast.

Meadow Flowers