A BRITISH ADVENTURE-ON TO THE LAKE DISTRICT

After a wonderful stay at Hazelwood Farm, it was time to move on, heading north to the Lake District.  The Lake District is a large national park which is one of the places we had promised to return to after our trip to England in 2013.  We weren’t disappointed this time either.  Beautiful lakes, (waters, if you remember), tall mountains, and walking trails galore.  We booked six nights at  High Fold Bed & Breakfast, up the hill from the waterside town of Ambleside.  Beautiful views all around and the ever present narrow roads to get there.

VIEW FROM HIGH FOLD B&B

AMBLESIDE

We managed to get in some walks, which helped we hoped, to keep our waistlines from expanding too much.  The breakfasts in British B&B’s can be huge.  The traditional breakfast here consists of eggs, bacon AND sausage, grilled tomato, baked beans, sautéed mushrooms, black pudding (blood sausage) toast, juice and coffee.  Also available is yogurt, fruit and different kinds of cereals.  Most B&B’s cook your eggs to order from poached to fried, or Eggs Benedict if you like.  Jackie, our host made sure that we had plenty to eat and we usually left the table stuffed.

We enjoyed our walks here, sharing fields with sheep and cows.  The beautiful green hills, ever present, and majestic old growth trees make the walks enjoyable.  The British are out enjoying too.  As a result of the Queen’s death, the Monday of her funeral was a national holiday, making it a 3 day weekend, so the Lake District was especially crowded.  So many people at times that parking became difficult at many of the trail heads.  The national park doesn’t charge an entry fee, but they make up for it with a fee to park.  There is usually a machine that sells you a ticket for how ever long you want to stay, that you place on your dashboard.  Many times we found the car park full, especially over the 3 day weekend.  It didn’t deter us though, we still found many places to walk.

We ended up in a routine of sorts.  Big breakfast at 8, out the door by 10, on the trail till 2, having tea and a scone instead of lunch, back to the B&B for a rest, then off to the local pub at 6:30 for dinner.  It was nice and actually made the trip enjoyable.  We didn’t do too much of tourist stuff like guided tours.  One that caught my eye was the Ullswater Steamers.    Back in the day, many of the lakes had steam powered boats which took mostly tourist, but some cargo, to different towns on the lakes.  One of the guests where we were stayed told be that some of the boats had been restored and still utilized steam.  How cool is that?  So, wanting the experience, I booked a ride on the Ullswater “Steamers”.  Notice the quotations?  It’s on their web site too.  Which means, they’re not driven by steam, but diesel.  I discovered this when the “steamer” pulled up to the dock and it didn’t quite sound like a steam engine.  I almost didn’t get on board, but we spent 50 bucks, so we went ahead and boarded with a group of blue haired ladies who were on a tour.  The only good thing about our excursion was conversations with the blue haired ladies.  Turns out there are real steam boats on other lakes, but not this one who’s company fooled me into believing that there were.

A word about scones the proper British way.  A scone here is about the size of a biscuit and comes with clotted cream and jam.  Clotted cream is really thick unsweetened whipped cream whipped almost to the point of turning into butter.  The cream goes on first then the jam.  I’m going to miss this almost daily treat.

CRUISING WITH THE BLUE HAIRED LADIES

NOT A STEAM BOAT