Walking

I love walking. I always have done. The areas I loved for walking as a young man were North Wales and The English Lake District. There was an openness and a closeness to the countryside because of the smallness. Scotland is wonderful and grand but many of its mountains could not be climbed by someone living on Merseyside (as I did until I came to live in Scotland) half a century ago without taking a holiday for the purpose. However I could get into the car and spend a day or a weekend on the Lake District fells. And I often did. One of my favourite places in the sixties was Borrowdale and, particularly, the little village of Grange-in-Borrowdale where I used to stay at Riggside. This is the post office in, I think, 1970.

The wide open treeless fells were often used for hound trailing. Unlike hunting a man ran with a scented lure tied behind him and the hounds set off later.

Like Yorkshire Pudding, one of my principal loves when out walking was taking photographs.

I wrote this because of a recent post by Librarian who writes frequently about her wonderful walks and recently showed us a walk through coniferous forests. I love deciduous forests but I cannot walk alone through coniferous forests without becoming hemmed in with claustrophobia and a real feeling of dread. What is odd is that I don't feel like that if I have a companion. Out on the fells though there is no such feeling at all. One is free.

One For Adrian

Adrian's back!  So good to be able to say that.  I suspect there are few, if any in my Blogland who have been missed more than he has.  The coincidence is that I had prepared a post for Adrian for scheduling tomorrow.  So here is that post of one of Adrian's icons which CJ and I visited last Saturday.

The irony is that the building next door to George Fisher has to be the most out of place and ugly building in Keswick and possibly in the Lake District.  Adrian would not approve.

Market Forces

Friday night we stayed in the four star guest house Lakes Lodge in Ambleside. The service was very friendly and helpful. The room was superb with very high quality bedding and towels (and loo paper!). The self-service breakfast was as good as I’ve been presented with in a hotel (and I’ve stayed in hundreds). The wi-fi was free and quite fast. The ice machine supplied CJ with constant and copious quantities.  The decor in the reception and breakfasting area was rather garish for my taste and out of keeping with the rest of the hotel but if you get there don’t let that put you off. In Ambleside there is so much accommodation the problem is choosing, although at the weekend in the height of the season I should imagine much of it is pretty full.

And an opportunity to mention Marmite cannot be missed.  It was available at breakfast in little heart-shaped containers along with the excellent selection of preserves.

Saturday we arrived in Cluanie. Cluanie has an Inn.  It's called, rather predictably, Cluanie Inn.  There is no other building for about 12 miles Westwards - perhaps more in the other direction. After having driven about 415 miles in indifferent and sometimes poor conditions food and a bed were very welcome.

I last stayed there about 25 years ago. They had at least two single rooms (unusual these days in many UK hotels in my experience) and a family room available.

The dinner was perfectly acceptable but not as good as the food we had in a restaurant in Ambleside for less money (and wine was 50% more expensive than a comparable glass of wine in Ambleside).  The service was good: a Czech waitress was particularly pleasant and someone doing maintenance in the morning insisted in carrying all the cases out to the car because I was struggling to get past his ladder. Breakfast lacked attention to detail and the bacon was covered in the unappetising stuff cheap bacon is covered in and neither CJ nor I ate it.  Much to my surprise there is wifi but because of the remote location it's satellite and not free (and nor would I expect it to have been) but the effort has been made and it is available in the public areas (but not the bedrooms).

The Cluanie Inn was 22% more expensive than the Lake Lodge.

Which probably goes to show you that if you are the only building with food and a bed for perhaps 25 miles (probably more) then market forces allow you to charge accordingly.

A Misty Morning in Borrowdale

Whilst I was looking for a picture that I knew I had of a gate to nowhere on the top of a mountain in the English Lake District for Soaring Through the World in Pictures I was browsing through a few of the thousands of photos I took over the years that I visited that hallowed ground.  I came across these slides taken, I think, around 1970 very early one autumn morning in Borrowdale.  They were magical times.  They are untouched up and far from perfect but they captured my heart at the time because they had a vague, almost out of focus air about them which reflected the reality of the moment.

 

Never Stop Searching For Wonderland

So that's what I was doing with my head in the stream all those years ago (early 1960s) and I thought I was just having a drink.

Where's He Gone Now?

CJ and I came to the Wirral via Keswick today. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane because CJ and I spent many holidays with Mum and Dad in the Lake District. Keswick is very different of course, although we were quite surprised at how many things were the same as they were 40 years ago. It will be interesting to compare some of today's photos with those of that era. Needless to say the hounds were not there then.

Those of you who read my posting when I reversed the car into the VW Polo might be interested to know that, as far as I can recall, the previous time that I reversed a car into something was when Mum and Dad, CJ and Phil and I were on holiday in the Lake District. I hit a post holding a parking sign in Keswick and the car was a Ford Zephyr. In my defence on that occasion it was raining heavily. The post was where the bollards are just outside the shop that is now Julian Graves.

We had lunch at a perfectly ordinary tea shop with good food and excellent service. What stood out, though, was the tables, the tops of which were made of a glass sandwich with dried wheats, flowers and the like.

The Mists of The Lakes

When I were a lad (and I once were) I used to spend lots of time in the Lake District. The last sentence has to be uttered with a broad Lancashire (or even a Yorkshire) accent for it to be taken seriously. Seriously though as soon as I could drive I used to go up for weekend out of the summer tourist season and stay and walk the fells: often with my pal Walter. It was in the Autumn that the most spectacular colours and light occurred from my point of view. You know the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfullness' colours. Anyway today I started scanning some of my old colour slides into the computer. Here are just two. This could become a repository for memories if I'm not careful.

Borrowdale early on an Autumn morning

Derwentwater early on an Autumn morning