Third day in England, waking up in Bowness

Wow, it's been almost a week since this day. I got caught up in laundry (11 loads) and grocery shopping (3 trips) since I returned to Germany late Tuesday the 21st. It's been hot here, so I haven't been doing too much except looking on-line for a new place to live.

Saturday June 18, Bowness-on-Windermere. We slept late, as the B&B offered breakfast between the most decent hours of 8:45 and 9:15. It was the full English breakfast for Logan: 1 fried egg on fried bread, hashbrown potatoes, sausage, mushrooms, broiled tomato, toast. The ‘small English breakfast’ for me. Even at that, I was served a mound of scrambled eggs, toast and a crumpet, and bacon. (What we’d call ‘back bacon’, very close in flavor to what we call ‘canadian bacon’, except it’s in a long strip instead of a round.) So I gave Logan half mine and we were both happy.

We had decided to do a bit of touring, had read about a stone circle near the town of Keswick. Marian, our hostess, said that Keswick is a market town, so there’d be that going on today, and it was about a 40 minute drive. We had been promised clear weather for the weekend, but it was very cloudy. That may have kept the number of visitors to the area down a bit.

We headed north following Lake Windermere, then turned towards Keswick. Came to the town of Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived. Took a couple pictures of the town, the fields and a monument. Then, on to Keswick.

We drove through a high pass between two very steep fells, took a couple pictures of the farmhouses and a waterfall high up the side of a fell.

We got to Keswick about 11:30, and it was very busy. “Heaving” our B&B hostess said. Everyone comes into town for the Saturday market, and it’s full of tourists too. It took a while to find parking, the first lot was full. We were cruising through the second lot and spotted someone going to their van, asked if they were leaving & they said yes. The guy even gave us the remains of his parking sticker – how nice! The lots are ‘pay & display’: you park, go to the machine & buy a tickets for how ever long you want to be there, then stick it to your windshield. NOTE: Carry change!! In most of the machines the minimum tickets was 2 pounds 10, they don’t take paper money and they don’t take cards.

We walked through the market place in the pedestrian zone. Looked like a farmer’s market. The veggies looked great, but we really didn’t have need to buy any, and I wanted to stretch my legs before lunch (not to mention I was still full from breakfast) so we continued on past the park, and to the shore of Derwentwater Lake. (Keswick sits at the north end of this lake.) The path took a turn through the obligatory sheep field, and headed towards some woods at the shore of the lake. We followed it for a bit, took some pictures of the lake. As we returned through the sheep field, to my amazement and no small measure of incredulity, I saw families picnicking in the sheep field. Now, remember, there is no place that doesn’t have sheep doots at least every square foot. So the picnic blanket is on doots, the kiddies are likely to be encountering doots, you’re eating while smelling doots. Ye gods. I revised my thoughts on the British views of sanitation right there.

We walked out of the doot field back into town, and had lunch at a fish & chips place. From there, we went to the information booth in Moot Hall, in the middle of the pedestrian zone, and got a map for a route up the hills to Castlerigg stone circle. We started out, it was still cloudy but pretty warm. We walked through the town of Keswick, past another park where people were lawn bowling. The grass was amazing – it looked like a carpet. We continued up onto a former train railbed, part of their ‘rails to trails’ system. After about ¼ mile, we headed back through a neighborhood, found the street we needed and start walking up. And up and up and up. We walked past the houses and it opened up into fields. We had a great view of the fells to the north, and could see 20 or so paragliders up there, some of them seemed motionless. They had a great spot for gliding. Not to sure about the landing – steep and rocky.

We finally got the field containing Castlerigg. And, you guessed it, sheep. This stone circle comprises 48 stones. They estimate it was built around 3,000 B.C., but no measurements have been taken. It’s one of the best preserved circles in the area. We wandered around, looking at the stones, taking pictures. There were maybe 40 or so people up there. Families picnicking amongst the doots. One family had – get this – a Frisbee and were encouraging the kids to play with it! A couple small girls were playing hide & seek in the circle, running around and hiding behind the stones. Eventually, one smeared the other’s leg with doots to gain the upper hand. I can see the ad now: “Sheep doots™ – perfect picnic ambiance and offensive weapon, all in one! Amuse the kiddies!”

We decided to take the non-suburban-neighborhood path back into Keswick, and followed the directions in reverse order through fields, over stiles and bridges and made it back just before our parking permit expired. The walk back was a challenge for me; many of the segments were through a field just at the edge, by the stone wall. Due to the rains, and the walk back being downhill, the way was rutted with lots of loose stones exposed so we had to walk very carefully. (I’m pretty sure I can’t carry Logan anywhere.) It was easy to see where people get the raw materials for the stone walls around the fields. I cannot imagine how any of the land in this area is cultivated. We did see some crop-land type fields, in the distance usually. I guess they wall the cultivatable land off for crops and let the sheep have the rest.

Pretty tired again, by now. The benefit of all this walking, stair climbing and bike riding (in Germany) is showing up in my legs. Love that!

We headed back towards Bowness. One the way we stopped again in Grasmere, bought some treats and wandered to the town square to sit and relax. Logan bought something called a ‘flapjack’, which was a very dense cakey thing. It was about 4 x 6 inches, couple inches deep and he only managed to finish about a third of it. He said it was good.

Back to the B&B, we showered, got into clean clothes and –oh no – walked down the hill into town to find dinner. I knew the climb back up at the end of the evening was going to be hard. We ended up in the beer garden of the Royal Oak. I had wine, Logan had beer & we ate decent pub food. Nice thing about not driving is to have a coupla what you’re drinking. This restaurant is at the south end of town heading back up the hill from the low spot, and the tables in the beer garden overlooked the street. We noticed lots of people walking from farther up the street, down into town. Afterwards, we decided to explore to see where they were coming from, and we walked a short way up the road and found the Belsfield Hotel.

I knew I’d seen a sign for that hotel pointing up the hill when we were down at the marina. Thought it might be interesting to check it out, so we walked in, through the deserted lobby (OK, it was about 9:30 by now) and through the bar out onto the best kept secret in Bowness. The Belsfield has a huge lawn, with 6 or 8 tables on it, facing northwest, looking up the lake. It was virtually deserted, too. We got a drink from the bar, carried it out to a table and sat there enjoying the spectacular sunset. At this time of year, actual sunset is around 10:30 or so, and the sky is lit with reds and pinks and purples for an hour before the sun goes down.

The Belsfield seems like a fusty old place. We did see some people in the dining room on our way through, very dressed up and much older than us. This might explain its quietness.

After dark, we headed back to our B&B. The stairs up to the room were a killer. I was hoping to sleep well that night. The B&B is set back from the main road, but there’s a small open park between it & the road, and a restaurant on the corner, with outside seating. Due to the heat, we had the window open and people were yammering away outside the restaurant until after midnight, and the cars on the road were pretty loud. Then, to go with the late sunset, dawn is about 4:30 and there are certain birds who start chirping about 45 minutes before dawn. Short sleep, all nights.

I advise if you need quiet to sleep, look for places that are not on the main roads through any of the towns in the Lake District. All the people who work the restaurants are up quite late, so they all get on the roads between midnight & 1.