Dextrous Dexter's Lake District Adventure

After a bit of a lull in travel thanks to The Incident, we are back in the saddle. We've done one or two country walks outside of London. While they were lovely they didn't quite manage to get a post, but they did inspire a trip to the Lake District in northern England. For a change, this post has almost no buildings in it and also features pictures of humans. Weird!

This picture pretty much sums up the Lake District, minus the lakes (and sheep.) Large open hilltops with woods at the base, small one-street towns, and green grassy grazing lands. And stone walls. This particular town is Grassmere, which is known for it's unique style of gingerbread which you can only get there. It is possible that we took the bus an extra thirty minutes just to try it. Worth it.

Hikes in England are not like hikes in America. Almost all of them lead through private farm lands on permissive paths. Usually, these need to cross the boundaries between fields, which means getting through (or more often over) fences. It's common on most of our walks to see stiles, which are a kind of half-ladder, half-stairs contraption. With so many stone walls I was curious to see how they managed this here. Wall stiles! Notice the sign asking you to keep near the wall: these guys aren't cemented together, so they need all the help physics can give them.

This is pretty much just a stone wall glamour shot for my mother-in-law. Hi Pat! Click on the picture for a larger view! These walls went pretty much everywhere in the area. No matter how far up a hill or into what felt like unpopulated land you got, you could rely on there being a stone wall to reference. It was both scenic and quite useful.

As expected, the area had a lot of outdoorsy tourists. Unexpectedly, it also had an amazing number of visiting dogs. This one is Dexter, who was very excited to climb the Cat Bells but not as excited to get on the boat that took us there. He ended up getting carried onto (and off) the boat, but had no problems with the rocky scrambles up the hill. He made better time than us.

Here's Mary part-way up the Cat Bells. Just to the right of her head is the low peak, which was our terminus. Behind that is a higher peak, which we'd like to do on a return trip when we actually plan for a nine-mile walk (the low peak is a three-mile one.) This hike had some noticably steep bits where we had to scramble over rocks to get up, but the views were great.

And here's that view. I have been playing around with the panorama feature on my phone in hopes that it would better capture the sweeping majesty, though somtimes it's just really good at capturing odd visual effects (the distortion on the woman up the path, the orange smear that was her son) and Mary trying to duck to not get captured. Still, it manages to show the beauty of the lake (Derwent Water) on the left and the farm valley on the right.

On the same day as the Cat Bells we also hiked up Walla Crag. This was a less popular, but no less stunning climb. Once we got up into the hills a bit, it was easy to feel a million miles from everywhere. From the peak we had a nice view down over the same lake as above, this time from the other side.

Here is that view without a doofus in the way. In the top right corner you can just make out the small buildings of Keswick where we stayed.

We will know that we are done with England when we stop being amused by sheep. Sheep are all over here (well, not in London) and we see them on almost every country walk we do. The Lake District took this to an extreme, and we even saw them in the towns grazing in church yards. The English folks I know feel that sheep are pretty pedestrian and boring, but for us they are still adorable and new.

On our final full day there, we did a six-mile walk which turned out to be a ten-mile hike. Oops! This walk took us almost the entire length of Ullswater (seen here in distort-o-rific panorama,) which is further South in the region. While I loved the cliff-side setting with sharp drop-offs beside us (Amazing views! It feels like you are walking on nothing!) Mary found it a bit more harrowing. Between the drop offs and unexpected length it was a little stressful, but it did end up being gorgeous.

At the end of the Ullswater walk, we walked a little on a very well-paved path to see the Aira Force waterfall. After the unexpectedly long first hike, we were pleased to have one that was a bit more level and even. The falls were beautiful, as were the bridges and rapids around them.

Overall we had a fantastic trip, and would highly recommend the area to anyone looking for a nice get away in England. We had worried a bit about our ability to get around just by bus, but in the end it was a non-issue. We're hopeful that we can sneak in a trip back before we return to America, but time will tell. There are still so many places to go!