Wanderung 25

Fall Follies

August - September 2011


 

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Monday, August 15th, 2011: Grasmere and Loughrigg Tarn

Bob:

After breakfast we drove over to Skelwith Bridge where we parked our car in the parking lot of Kirkstone Quarry and ran in to ask if our "HOLT" sign could be done before we left. The lady said she thought they could get to it during the day, so we promised to come back that afternoon and left our car in their parking lot while we went off on our walk.

From "The Langdales" packet of walks we had selected # 5, Loughrigg Tarn, for our daily constitutional because it ran by the quarry at one point. So we picked up the trail where it passed by Skelwith Force waterfall, and then continued on that really wide, level, well-graded path to the Elterwater. Since it hadn't rained (much) in the last two days, however, the water in the Elterwater tarn was noticeably calmer. The sun was shining off and on, we obtained some rather nice pictures of the clouds and mountains reflecting in the surface of the little lake.

Monika:

Another day, another nice walk. But first we stopped at the Kirkstone quarry workshop to find out about our sign. We were told by the secretary who had helped us all along, that she was not quite sure but thought it probably would be done. We should come back in a few hours and she could tell us for sure. That suited us fine, since we could leave the car parked and head towards a walk that again "officially" started in Elterwater but by the end went almost past the slate workshop.

So we started the walk at landmark number 9 and followed it back around to number 1, the Britannia Inn. Along the way we walked past the Skelwith Force waterfall and went through the obligatory kissing gate. These gates are designed so that only one person can go through at a time, which results in one person on each side of the gate, at which time you can pause for a quick kiss across the top.

The weather was somewhat sunny and Bob got a spectacular picture of clouds reflecting in the waters of the river Brathey. We also got some nice mirror pictures of the Langdale Pikes.

Bob:

At the end of this section of the trail we entered the hamlet of Elterwater and repassed the Britannia Inn where we had had such a nice lunch previously. It was too early for lunch this time, however, so we just took a different route out of the hamlet and started ascending the into a pass between the mountains. The occasional direct sunlight made a stupendous difference in the appearance of the landscape around us! The mountains, when illuminated, would stand out above the dark valleys almost like gnarled old beacons jutting up into the air, and the grassy valley hillsides would turn an almost impossible shade of emerald green--the only other time I've seen that kind of green grass was in fact in Ireland. Even such mundane plants as ferns or bracken literally started gleaming in the sunlight and throwing off scintillating sparks of sunbeams, which made them beautiful.

Monika:

At Elterwater we found a mailbox to post our cards and then started on the new part of the walk. It first took us through the little town of Elterwater. We passed the studio of Judy Boyle. Her pictures of the Lake District hang everywhere on the walls of Holmeshead Farm, so I would not have minded looking in at her paintings. But alas the studio was closed until August 24th. So we walked on, passing the clock house, an inn that had a nice big clock in the brick work, and finally crossed the road from Skelwith Bridge and headed onto a field going up, up, up.

There seemed to be several different paths across the field and the instructions were not really clear as to which on would be the best. But we got to the next lane and from there it was up the hill some more along a path. Again the instructions were not really clear, but in the end all the different paths led to the same spot at the top. While walking we had some really nice views of Elterwater hamlet and tarn and of the Langdale Pikes west of it. We even could see the quarry where the slate was mined.


 

Bob:

We take steep uphill stretches quite gradually, so it took us a while to work our way up and over the pass in several slow stages. But we were rewarded on the other side with a just fantastic view of Grasmere Lake (tarn?) in a beautiful sun-drenched valley surrounded by the old, gnarled mountain peaks. How pretty!

Monika:

But once we were across the top we were treated to wonderful views of Grasmere (lake and hamlet) and the peaks beyond it. Where yesterday we walked through Beatrix Potter countryside, today we looked at William Wordsworth country. I am just sorry, we would not get down to Dove Cottage in Grasmere. We are spending seven days here, and it seems we have hardly scratched the surface of walks we could do starting within a 10 mile radius of our farm.

Bob:

Naturally we then had to work our way back downhill and start to circle back to our starting point. The walk designers had put in a little detour over to Loughrigg Tarn, a much smaller but still quite pretty lake in the middle of some farm fields and forest copses. Then we climbed up and over a final ridge to pass through some pastures, this time with beautiful horses grazing in them, and come back to the area of Kirkstone Quarry.

When we checked in at Kirkstone Quarry at the end of our walk, we found that our sign had already been done in the rough version! Hurray! Our "HOLT" sign was engraved on part of a still longer slab but the letter engraving was complete and even the gilding had been painted on. Clearly they still needed to make the final cut down to size and then polish the surface, but we had every confidence that it would be done in time for us to pick it up on our way back out of town to Wales the next morning.

Monika:

We walked down the hill and enjoyed the sheep. One of the sheep had blue and red paint sprayed onto its white fleece; we called it our "Yankee Doodle Dandy" sheep. Our walk finally took us to the title of this walk, the Loughrigg Tarn. It was a nice little lake, but nothing to write home about. But pictures were of course taken, after all we walked here.

From there we walked through a little village of rental cottages. They really did look nice, and I was thinking, it might be nice some time to rent a two bedroom one for a month and let the kids come and visit for a week or two.

The last field we had to walk across had horses grazing instead of the ubiquitous sheep. They were quite beautiful and there was a special sign, requesting the hikers not to feed these horses and not to be afraid of them, they liked people.

Back at the quarry workshop, we saw our sign already in raw form. It just had to dry and be finished. But it looked already quite nice, and I am looking forward to hanging it on our door.

Bob:

Finding out that Ambleside was 3 miles away, we decided we were just too tired to walk there and back, so we used the car to drive over and wander around that pretty little town for the rest of the afternoon. We had stuffed jacket potatoes (American: baked potatoes) for lunch at the Daisy Cafe, and the proprietor was a very friendly man who chatted with us about walks in the area. He showed us a very nice figure 8 walk that led North from Ambleside to Grasmere and circled the tarn as one loop. It looked like a great walk and we were just sorry we were scheduled to leave the next day and could not take it.

We also found an ATM so that we could get enough cash to pay our B&B bill, and then went shopping. I just couldn't resist purchasing a Harris tweed wool hat that was hand-woven in the Outer Hebrides. When I'm in America I try to buy American, but when I'm in other countries, I try to buy their local products also and I suspect that it is not easy to make a living (or endure the winters) on the Outer Hebrides! Monika also found a nice purple skirt and flowery blouse, but both of her items were on sale so they ended up costing less than my hat!!

Monika:

Now came the question of lunch and an ATM. We decided to drive into Ambleside for both. Of course, that meant parking in a car park. We picked the first one we got to, and when I walked to the pay automat, a guy asked me whether we could use his ticket. They had paid till 5:30 (it was now about 1:30) and were ready to leave. So they gave us their ticket. We thanked them profusely and could take our time in Ambleside not having to worry about getting back to the car at a certain time.

We first stopped by the ATM I had remembered and got some more cash. We now had enough to pay cash for our room and board tomorrow. Then we looked for a place to eat. But the first cafe that had a nice menu did not have a spare table. The next one had a spare table but only a couple bar stools to sit on. But that was just fine, since the menu offered jacket potatoes with your choice of fillings, and there were quite a few to choose from. Bob decided on corn beef and baked beans and I had English bacon and cheese. Both even came with a small salad and the fillings were overflowing. It really was quite a meal!

We were full of food and had no parking worries, so we decided to look at some stores. The first one was a rock store which was really fascinating. It had all kinds of rocks and even some astounding fossils. We did enjoy looking at all of it.

But our downfall was the Edinburgh Mill Outlet. They had a lot of stuff on sale, and I did find a rather nice dark red almost purple skirt and a blouse that went with it both for 50% off. Bob also found a rather nice wallet for me, since the one I was using was falling apart. But for himself he found a nice brown tweed hat. It looks really spiffy!

But that was about all the shopping we were up to. We slowly walked back through the town, taking pictures of unusual signs. The last part was past a miniature golf course that was actually on the grass, so it was a lot more like real golf only with much shorter holes. A lot of kids and adults seemed to enjoy it.

At the car park, we gave the ticket to another couple that had just arrived, since there were still more than two hours left on it, and drove back to the farm, this time trying a different route passing the intriguingly named "Drunken Duck Inn". It was about a mile from the farm and we had passed it several times. Once, a duck was waddling uncertainly about in the middle of the street and we wondered aloud whether it was drunken, since it did not seem to care about the car coming up on it.

Bob:

Ah well, we drove back to Holmeshead and went for one final walk down the lane through the fields to see where it ended up, and then we finally retired to our room for the evening. We both had had such an enjoyable visit and the ambience was so nice that we were reluctant to leave, but we had already reserved our rooms down in Wales so we said "good-bye" to all the farm animals and mentally prepared ourselves to leave the next morning.

Monika:

Back at the farm, we had our afternoon coffee/cocoa and cookie break. But we were not really tired (after all we had only walked 2 and a half hours) and decided to explore the surroundings a little more. We walked down the lane in back of our farm and finally did get to a house that must have come out on the road at the bottom. Since our curiosity was satisfied we walked back up the lane, that resembled nothing so much as a small creek since water from the recent rains was still draining down it.

On the way back we got another good picture of the Holmeshead farm and sat out in the sun in front of the back door for awhile admiring all the blooming plants.

Back in our room I was ready to download the pictures and then pick the best of our pictures from the Lake District. It really had been a wonderful seven days.


 



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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