Walking Ambleside to Grasmere

A much more gentle goal for today’s walk; a low level walk from Ambleside to Grasmere via Rydal Water. I’d never done this walk before so I was keen to do it.

We headed out of town a little after 10am. The first part was road walking but we soon stepped off the main road and onto one of Cumbria’s many corpse roads, where bodies were transported from town to town.

We took many photos of the landscape and livestock as we wandered along. The weather was cloudy but warm.

Over a stile and into the grounds of Rydal Hall, a manor house with some lovely garden features.

‘Grot House’ must have been named before people realised ‘grotto’ was more suitable.

To get to the house we walked along this lovely path then under a bridge.

The inside of the house was simple but lovely, with window seats for viewing the waterfall.

We had a little walk around their gardens and took a photo of the front of the main house.

We thought about pretending we were staying here but you lot would never believe it.

On our way out we saw the most magnificent carpet of wild garlic I have ever seen! Look at it!

It was very hard to photograph well but we gave it our best shot.

On to the 400 year old church just down the road.

The interior of the church was lovely in its simplicity.

There was a bowl and little slips of paper up the front on the little table. Visitors were invited to write a prayer or message to god and put it in the bowl. Luke pulled a couple out and had a look.

Did he fall asleep in church? Is this a threat?

Past the church and down to Rydal village, which is a very small collection of houses and a pub. It is very cute though!

Clematis is out everywhere at the moment. So pretty!

The next section of the wall was on the other side of the main road, over a bridge and then along the banks of Rydal Water.

The forest was a luminous green, with all the new leaves and fresh ferns.

Bluebells are irritatingly difficult to photograph effectively but so magical in person.

This is a very famous boat shed that has has been photographed millions of times… I haven’t done it justice, but sometimes it looks like this:

The walk along the water was lovely and we got to see some people doing something unexpected…

… getting in the water. Upon closer inspection we could see the kids had gum boots and there were a couple of adults with wetsuits. The water temperature today was 11 degrees.

Then it was across country to the next body of water, Grasmere.

Another photo that completely fails to capture the millions of bluebells in front of us.

I won’t lie, much like this post, the route was longer than I expected. Maybe my mile to kilometre conversion was off but the walk did feel longer than I’d anticipated.

We stopped for a toilet break at the cafe next to the cottage where Wordsworth lived. This is a photo of his cottage, not the cafe.

Here’s a poem I liked from the visitors centre.

Next stop: lunch! Even though I walked everyone further than they’d probably have liked, food is so much more enjoyable when you’re tired (or at least, that’s what I keep telling them).

I managed to take a photo that looks like I’m stalking them.

Lea and I shared a coronation chicken sandwich and then I ate half of Luke’s bowl of chips.

Almost as delicious but half as brightly coloured as my last curried chicken sandwich.

The people next to us had a dog that was a BORDOODLE! Border collie x poodle.

Here’s the dog I patted for about half an hour.

A mix I had not heard of until this year and one of my workmates got one. This one kept leaning on my leg and I found myself patting it without realising what I was doing. I am definitely missing Bonnie but I am 100% certain she is not missing us, going by the photos I am getting from the people she is staying with.

Daycare photo from a few days ago for reference.

Next we wandered around Grasmere and looked at all the cute buildings.

After doing a couple of circuits of town we decided on afternoon tea at the hotel above. Apart from Lea being served a pot of tea that contained a single teabag and getting a grumpy look from the waitress when I asked for more, the food as lovely and served in a very comfortable room with a view of the plebs walking past.

The only significant thing we did in Grasmere was buy some ‘famous’ Grasmere gingerbread.

This required queuing, which I am ideologically opposed to, but we eventually got into the tiny room and Lea bought a packet.

Last was a top-deck bus ride back to Ambleside!

This might be my longest post yet but I couldn’t bear not to share all these magnificent views. To finish, for those of you who know my dog, here’s a last photo of her at daycare with her adopted older brother, Chester.

17May2023

Ambleside: A Walk Up Loughrigg Fell

by Miss Penny Black

Everyone was happy for me to lead the way today so I suggested a walk up Loughrigg Fell, which is one of the closest and smallest fells near Ambleside.

We were up and out just before 10am, all well-rested and full of energy. It’s so nice to have a kitchen and be able to have a small breakfast. The place we are staying at only has one teaspoon though so we have to take it in turns to use it… and no toilet roll holders, which is also kind of weird.

We walked across the park and over the bridge to the bottom of the hill.

Up a steep road then over a stile.

There were swathes of bluebells, which are hard to photograph but stunning in real life.

Within half an hour we had made it up the first section to Todd Crag, which had beautiful views over Ambleside and Windermere.

The top of Loughrigg is undulating so we walked up and down a bit and even did a tiny bit of scrambling (walking but having to use your hands where it’s steep). We saw a deer and I saw a hawk.

Some of the tarns had completely dried up but the larger ones remained.

We took lots of breaks to enjoy the views.

We had a chat to a fellow who was enjoying a quiet walk while his wife was at her 75th school reunion in Ambleside. We later passed him and his wife in town and told her we hoped she’d had a lovely time!

After wandering on the southern half of the fell, and everyone feeling fine, I suggested we walk up the higher part of the fell to the north as I recalled there being good views of the Langdales from the other side.

This is the part of the day where I stopped taking so many photos because the path was distinctly more hilly and rocky than I’d recalled. Everyone else was extremely patient and put in a top effort and we got up the steep and gravelly slopes with a few rest stops.

We also saw the fighter jets again from this side! We’d seen a tiny moment of them from Ambleside yesterday but had a much better view today.

I don’t like slippery gravel at all, especially downhill, so I used the OS map app to navigate us down some grassy goat tracks on the far side and back to the main path. It was a bit hairy but I think, in the end, that it was a better way to go and no one complained at all. Champions!

Once we got down to the wide track it was an easy walk down back into Ambleside.

Next stop:

For some:

The sun was out, along with every man, woman, child and dog in town. After lunch we had a wander around town and a look in the Oxfam store.

I bought this book, I hope to use it to my advantage.

Then we discovered that Lea hadn’t tried Jaffa cakes so it was home for tea and biscuits!

(Or cake, depending on how you view them)

We learned our lesson from last night and booked a table booked at The Flying Fleece for dinner.

I had curry and everyone else had a gigantic Cumberland sausage and a mountain of mashed potato. A satisfying end to a big day!

16May2023

Reunited!

by Miss Penny Black

I’d like to say we looked this happy when we woke up in the morning in our tiny shoebox hotel room, but neither of us got enough sleep and so we struggled out of bed and over to Euston station. Along with an average breakfast sandwich, I had what I hope was the worst coffee of my life, because if anything worse is ahead of me I might avoid coffee forever.

I like how people with bags on wheels take up twice the space of one person and they always seem to walk right in the middle of any walkway.

Our train was, and I am not exaggerating, 16 carriages long and we were in furthest one.

The train was on time and we enjoyed watching the scenery roll past and catching up with each other’s lives since we were last together.

We spotted lots of bluebells from the train, so lovely!

We got into Windermere on time just before lunch and dropped our bags at the information centre so we could go for a walk around town and use up the time before check in.

We had some coffee while chasing up the address details for our accommodation in Keswick then went for a walk down towards Bowness.

It’s been a real trend for people to crochet letterbox decorations for the coronation.

We found a beautiful pub for lunch.

Then walked to a little lookout through some quiet woods.

Lovely weather!

Eventually we got our bags out of storage and caught the bus to Ambleside. Our Airbnb was right in the centre of town in a little alleyway called ‘The Slack’.

By the time we got into the apartment we were more exhausted than we’d been in a long, long time. After almost falling asleep a number of times we decided to go out for groceries and then to the nearest pub.

We walked into the Ambleside Inn and everyone was watching football so we asked who was playing and who we should barrack for (Liverpool against Leeds, the crowd was fairly split on who to support). We bought a drink each and went into the upstairs bit. We ended up talking to a local guy who told us basically his life story and all about the area. He and his friend gave us a recommendation for a pub on the last leg of our LD trip (the Kirkstile Inn) and I showed him my fell pony photos. We ended up hugging him goodbye and he wished us a lovely holiday. Delightful!

Finally we fell into bed for a long and dreamless sleep, the best we’d had in several nights!

8May2018

Langdale to Borrowdale: My Second Encounter With Mountain Rescue.

by Miss Penny Black

I caught the bus from Ambleside to The Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, a place I’ve heard a lot about as it appears on many UK hiking blogs. Because the first bus didn’t leave Ambleside until 9:30 and didn’t get to TODG until 10:30ish I didn’t go inside and now I’m kind of sorry. At the same time that day turned out to be the hardest slog yet so I’m glad I didn’t hang around.

The Langdale Valley on a sunny bank holiday Saturday is less a peaceful stroll through a stunning valley and more a walk along a busy high street. So many people! More than I’d seen on all the walks I’d done previously put together. At the end of the valley the track splits off in several directions though so that helped thin the hordes. Also at the end of the valley were a trio of mountain rescue vehicles and I learned from a conversation later in the day that it definitely wasn’t a drill and they’d been there since 8am. No idea what happened though.

As I faced the steep wall of Stake Pass I stopped thinking about other people and mainly started feeling sorry for myself. No one else was carrying a huge pack and it looked like maybe 1000 steps or more to the top, most of them moderately steep and all of them uneven.

I did find, once I got going, that is wasn’t so bad. Because the path had water running down it (they almost all do) and I had to look at every step for footing, I only ended up stopping a few times and with the view getting better and better, it was exciting to climb higher. I’ve never been great with heights but I think this experience is definitely helping me take more risks and be brave. I know some people would bound up stairs like that but for me it was a challenge. When I got to the top I felt like I’d conquered the world.

Over the top was an open grassland area for a short space. It was up here I met a group of uni students from Preston University. We swapped Instagram details at their insistence, then it was down into Borrowdale. Instead of uneven stone steps the path was loose gravel, which is my least favourite surface. I ended up walking on the grass edges on the narrow path that wiggled back and forth. I stopped halfway down and cooked some pasta (taking the advice of several people to actually have decent break when I felt tired) and while I did a man from, of all places, Redcar, came past. This was funny for me because Redcar is a tiny town in Yorkshire and Luke and I stayed in the nearby town of Saltburn last time we were here. The people we stayed with had nothing good to say about Redcar and made this point quite a number of times. Then I meet this guy and he said exactly the same thing.

We had a chat about things other than Redcar and he told me I should definitely do some wild camping at some stage and I agreed (we’ll see) then he moved on. I slowly inched my way down the slope and then struggled along the rocky and muddy valley floor. This was the point that I finally gave up trying to keep my feet dry and just walked through the mud. Within about two kilometres there were about 20 streams to cross and I managed most ok but it was slow going. I met an older couple (I should start tracking how many times I use that phrase) who told me this was as dry as it gets and quite often water is sheeting down the valley walls. Christ almighty.

The water was beautifully clear though.

I decided, as I always do, to stop at the first campsite I came to. It was pretty basic and so busy it looked like there was a music festival going on. I pitched my tent then went in search of the closest pub and had a pint of cider in their sunny beer garden. Lovely!

5May2018

One Day In Ambleside

by Miss Penny Black

Today I once again woke up at stupid o’clock so I walked the mile down to the lake to have a look before breakfast. At least it’s a chance for photos without hoards of tourists.

This is one of the most famous buildings in the area, imaginatively named Bridge House. How do they come up with these things?

I also looked in the window of the realtor’s and picked out a few places that were just what I’d like for a holiday cottage if I sold everything I owned. This area is not cheap!

I also noticed this intriguing display. An unusual way of rounding up the mentally ill, but no doubt it works.

At breakfast I discovered that my American friend from The Sun in Coniston also happens to be staying at The Queen, so we ate breakfast together again and talked about our plans.

Soon after I set off across Ambleside walking without my big backpack and it was marvellous! I headed east out of town, thinking I might just wander around and end up on Loughrigg Fell. I have learned, since I got back, that it is pronounced ‘luffrig’, which is probably the only pronunciation I didn’t try out on other walkers on my way back.

First I walked toward Lily Tarn, or I thought I did. I found a small tarn, then another and then another. I wasn’t sure which was actually the one on the map, but it didn’t really matter. The whole area of Loughrigg Fell is surrounded by roads and villages, it’s pretty difficult to get lost for more than ten minutes.

I walked up to Todd Crag and between two rocky outcrops that perfectly framed an outstanding view south over Windermere, with Ambleside to my east. It was truly breathtaking and yet another walk where I hadn’t seen a soul.

I then struck out towards Loughrigg, which was pretty easy to get up. Although there was a place marked, rather ominously, ‘Black Mire’ near the path. The views from the other side were equally splendid – over to the Langdales and all the shades of green and rusty red. The weather held out and I had a good wander around taking photos.

As I headed down at about 11am I passed the first of dozens of groups heading up the hill. Several people were even fooled, by my serious-looking coat, map and sticks, into asking me for advice and directions, which I spread around liberally without hesitation.

After a pub lunch of fish and chips I visited the laundromat to get the worst of the mud and stench out of my clothes. It’s the first laundromat I’ve ever been in that didn’t sell laundry powder. Luckily there was a machine that still had quite a bit in the slot – I wasn’t about to buy a whole box for one wash. Then I bought a few bits of food for the next leg – which is a bit up in the air at the moment as I’m waiting to hear back from Australasian friends who happen to be in Ravenglass at this very moment, and I’m trying to convince them that a trip to the Muncaster Cumberland Sausage Festival would be a good idea. We’ll see how it pans out tomorrow. I’d be happy to spend another day in Ambleside walking over the hills on the other side of town.

Dinner in the pub, some blogging and reading The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. A surprisingly readable book about rhetoric but not enthralling enough to keep me awake. There’s only so much I can take in about anadiplosis, hyperbatons an aposiopesis. Especially after a pint of quite strong scrumpy.

Good night!