The Lakes

We spent today at The Lakes district. I won’t even bother trying to describe it because for some things, words are simply inadequate.

Dumdy, dumdy, dum.......

Oh, alright, but only cause you asked nicely.

We visited two lakes, Ullswater and Windemere, and took a steamboat on Ullswater (although it should have been called a diesboat as the only steam to be found was out of my ears when we found we had to pay for parking while on the boat). Actually, you pay for parking absolutely everywhere in the UK – while walking along a street we stopped to look in a shop window and someone stung me for a pound (just joking, but only just).

Ullswater Lake - all of the lakes are long and thin, they are glacial lakes.

The lake was as beautiful as the weather bleak, but it really didn’t matter, as the view in every direction was beyond description. After leaving the Ullswater Lake, we drove up one of the steepest and narrowest roads I’ve ever seen to a point called Kirkstone Pass, which is so rugged, it looks like it belonged on the set of Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, we were completely surrounded by mist and fog (and that was inside the car), so any photography was out of the question.

This is NOT Kirkstone Pass (as we couldn't even see the road ahead), but a nice view nonetheless.

On our way to Ullswater, we stopped at the Aira Force, from the Viking word Fors, which means running water (the Vikings were very big on plumbing, apparently). On the walk to the falls, we passed through a pinetum, which is a plantation of a number of different pinus trees planted by the Duke of Norfolk. Boy, were they tall.

Part of Aira Force

The falls themselves were really beautiful, and the countryside quite majestic. At one stage I could have sworn I saw Robin Hood and his band of merry men, but Alison assured me it was just a bunch of German bushwalkers (although one did look a lot like Friar Tuck).

We discovered this wall on our walk to the falls. We called it Adrian's Wall. No, not that other famous wall around here, Hadrian's Wall - this wall was built by the local sheep farmer, Adrian, to keep bloody tourists like us out.

 

Beautiful Lake Windemere

They're very big on stone fencing here - and they never need re-straining!

We are now one-third of the way into our Grand Tour, and it’s only in the last day or so that I’ve come to terms with being away; prior to this I would have happily returned home. It wasn’t that we weren’t having a great time, we were, it is simply that it takes some time to get used to life on the go all the time. And, to be honest, I was missing home. Now that we’ve become acclimatized to the traveling life, I think it inevitable that fairly soon thoughts will turn to life post-trip. In other words, we now find ourselves with the opposite dilemma – how does life in Wangaratta, Victoria ever hope to compare with what we’ve seen and done. I guess we’ve got another six weeks to contemplate that one.