Free day

HF gives you a day off from hiking, that being today. Me being me, I covered a lot of ground, starting with a Neolithic stone circle. At 5,000 years old, it's about 1,000 years older than its Bronze Age cousins. Read more here.

I gave a lift to four lovely Australian women, one of who snapped me:

I'm having dinner with my cousin tonight so I'm not in hiking clothes. Luckily you can drive very near to the circle.

From there on to Grasmere, where I bought ginger cake at a famous bakery, visited Wordsworth's grave, bought gifts at a shop dedicated to the local Herdwick sheep variety, and generally admired the adorableness of the village. This is the Wordsworth Inn, with William's Bar.

No wonder the Lake District produced so many poets.

This poem is near Wordsworth's grave:

It's in a garden where pavers were sold to people to raise money for upkeep of nearby St. Oswald's, part of which was built in the 1300s. Onwards to Sawrey, home to Beatrix Potter's Hilltop Farm. The first thing I noticed was a Jemima Puddleduck weather vane.

Then a quad bike stops so a farmer can talk to his neighbour, while his daughter and two sheepdogs wait.

So now I'm at Hilltop Farm, where signs tell you about features, such as this gate, that appeared in particular Beatrix Potter stories. Potter is a real heroine in these parts because she used her wealth to buy and conserve land. Not having children, she bequeathed the land to the National Trust to protect it in perpetuity.  

Her garden was loose and low maintenance, not formal. And she bought antiques because she thought they were better than modern furniture.

Although I think this dresser was contemporary to when she lived there.

It's a lovely little house and it isn't hard to see how her imagination was fired by her surroundings.

Next on to the medieval town of Hawkeshead, where I ate the lunch HF packed for me. And visited St. Michael and the Angels Church (from Wiki: "A chapel existed on the site in the 12th century, which was extended to the length of the present church in about 1300. The north and south aisle were added in 1500"). And bought a daypack at a hiking store. I left mine at home and have been using one borrowed from an Australian. Like Grasmere, it is a charming town with lots of nooks and crannies.

The weather hasn't been great today, rain on and off. From Hawkeshead I drove to Ambleside, where I was having dinner with my cousin Bill and his wife Mary Beth. I got there around 2:45 and dinner wasn't until 6:30. I wandered around Ambleside for a while – in a persistent rain – then retreated to Bill's hotel, where I sat reading a book contentedly for a few hours. I never have time to read so this was a real luxury. Bill changed the reservation to the hotel restaurant, rather than one in the village he had earlier suggested, and the only time they had was 8 pm. So I got home to Derwent Bank around 11 pm and was very lucky to find a waitress to let me in, as the house is locked at 10 pm.

We had a great time catching up on 1,000 different things. They've been playing golf for the past week in Scotland and are now going to have two days to explore the Lake District. With only two days, I wouldn't know where to start. I suggested Grasmere, as it's quiter than Ambleside.

10 July