On a beautiful bright Spring Sunday we set off to visit the cottage of William Wordsworth at Grasmere where he wrote all of his poetry during his 9 years there. We then continued our discovery of the beautiful Lake District or 'The Lakes' but never 'The Lakes District', so we are told. This country is gorgeous! Panoramic and dramatic - from the fells to the back roads with their neat hedges, juicy green grass meadows and quaint villages.
Being a Sunday there were many, many people out taking advantage of the sunshine and either swimming or kayaking on the lakes, taking the opportunity to do some 'hill' walking (as opposed to bush walking) or just sitting out in the sun in a village country pub or just on the side of the road!
Our trip today was typical in terms of the type of 'back' roads we've travelled - that is travelling at about 30mph along continually winding roads with hardly a straight stretch of road, mostly single width continually having to slow to allow another vehicle coming the other way to pass, and bordered on either side by either dry stone walls or hedges right up to the road edges. Then into a
little village we pop with houses right up to the road edge and occasionally we see where vehicles have clipped house walls (we wonder what you hear when you're inside when this happens), and almost in every village a church and a pub often with tables and chairs very adjacent to the road! Quite a sight.
During the day we stopped at Castlerigg Stone Circle, one of a considerable number of these ancient stone sights (think Stonehenge) which are apparently dated at about 5,000 years. We saw stones, grazing sheep and a number of people trying to immerse themselves in the 'energy' of the site!
We continued to explore The Lakes in the afternoon which included a car/bus ferry trip across Lake Windemere which looked like a fairly substantial recreational precinct.
One other thing of note is the amount of patriotic bunting, English flags etc which have festooned the country in the leadup to the Queen's Jubilee celebrations which will culminate next weekend.