Free day #2

My only job today was to get from Derwent Bank house to Monk Coniston house on Coniston Water, about a 50 minute drive. I started with a 15 minute walk from Derwent Bank house through the woods to the next estate, Lingholm Estate, where Beatrix Potter spent her holidays as a young woman.

Here is the entrance to the walled garden, which apparently inspired Mr. McGregor's garden in her books, two of which were written here.

Lingholm Estate in the background. I've been in many walled gardens in Northern Ireland (I even wrote a paper on them while at Queen's) but never one with a net canopy.

I saw a dog standing stock still in the garden. One of the gardeners said he was looking for mice. She said he doesn't kill the mice, he just likes looking for them. It seemed somehow very Beatrix Potterish.

After this side trip, I got in the car and headed south. I stopped at Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's birthplace, but it wasn't open. I had planned to shop in Ambleside but I missed a turn for the parking lot and couldn't be bothered to search out parking using the one-way traffic system (it was raining and I wasn't that interested in shopping). So I went straight to Coniston, where I had lunch and shopped at a vintage fair in an old church. I went to the jetty and took the photo below.

I couldn't check in until 4 pm so I went up to Brantwood House, home of the polymath John Ruskin, and enjoyed touring his rooms, furnished as they would have been in his time, minus a collection of paintings by Turner and Gainsborough. The original cottage was built in the late 1700s but the house was repeatedly extended.

He had a turret added to his bedroom, good idea when this is the view.

It was a rainy day, but not a bother when you aren't hiking. I ended the day with a lovely meal at Monk Coniston, my home for the next three nights. Beatrix Potter owned this estate, like many others in the Lake District, and donated it to the National Trust upon her death. HF Holidays rents the house from the National Trust.

14 July