Hiking: Askham to Winter Crag via Pooley Bridge

by Miss Penny Black

I realise those names aren’t going to mean much to most people but it was my first day of real hiking! Very exciting! And all to places I’ve never been before. Last time I mainly stuck to the Cumbria Way, which heads through the middle of the LD, north to south, but this time I’ve started in the far east.

Last time I was here in the Lake District I used waterproof paper maps, but this time I’ve downloaded the OS map app and it’s saved a lot of room in my pack! I had to carry four giant sheets for the entire region, it’s nice to have that space free for other things now.

After a marginally better night of sleep I had French toast and bacon for breakfast (it’s really the best thing for my health to be leaving the Punchbowl, I think I’ve had too much of a good thing) and found an Airbnb property in a valley off Ullswater, the closest and second largest of the lakes in Cumbria.

I set off in beautiful sunshine and headed west through the village. Most villages are in valleys so they are close to water, but this means every hike starts with an uphill climb, so by the time I’d got to the top of the rise I was in short sleeves, despite it being about 5 degrees.

A panorama of fells, snow-capped in the distance, ringed the horizon and I felt my spirits soar.

I took a little deviation from the path to get to the highest point on Heughscar Hill, where I had a wonderful surprise.

Fell ponies! I had no idea if they were the sort of wild animals you could get very close to. Like any sane person, I’m wary of animals that weigh five times as much as me, but they seemed extremely unconcerned by my presence and the track brought me closer.

They had very long manes and were middle-sized, bigger than Icelandic ponies but not huge. There were 14 in total, one grey and the rest dark brown. After a bit of research I learned that wild fell ponies are quite rare and have been in England since before Roman times. Around Ullswater and north of Kendal is the best place to see them.

Fortunately the hail was tiny – smaller than a pea, so I put on my hat and coat and I was fine. It didn’t last long and it was preferable to rain as it just bounced off.

After I got to the top of the hill I started seeing other hikers in the distance, all heading towards High Street, an old Roman road and ridge that runs 20 miles from near Askham to Windermere. Walking it had been my main goal for this trip but now that I’m seeing the tiny little people on top it seems very high.

I walked over the hill and down into Pooley Bridge. The sun came out again and the small town was heaving with day trippers and campers. Ullswater is ringed with campsites and hotels, and there’s a 20 miles circuit walk of the lake.

I stopped in the town and first looked at a church hall craft market, where I definitely wasn’t going to buy anything.

I bought three things. In my defence, they were all very small things.

I asked one of the ladies where to get coffee and she recommended a cafe/bookstore around the corner. I can’t think of a better retail combination!

I had a very nice coffee and a slice of a citrus something-or-other.

I also used the bathroom, which is something I wouldn’t normally mention on the blog, but check out this wallpaper!

The owner of my accommodation for the coming night had recommended talking the lake steamer down the the far end and walking from there, but I had all day (it was only 11am) and it didn’t look far on the map, so I decided to walk.

Once out of Pooley Bridge the crowds subsided to a constant stream rather than an impenetrable scrum, and I saw lots of sodden spaniels, romping retrievers and dripping dachsunds, all enjoying the water.

I looked longingly at the little sailboats out on the water, but apparently they are all privately owned, all the boats for rent were motorised or of the paddling variety.

To be honest, after two lessons this year I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to take one out, but still…

I took a few breaks along the side of the lake as there didn’t seem to be much rush. The path eventually moved away from the water and up into the hills, where the ubiquitous streams and bogs started to appear. In Australia, if you went out bushwalking, a stream or river would be something you’d come across a couple of times a day, if you were lucky. Here it’s more unusual to not be walking over shallow running water or wading through mud at every gate.

At one point a nice family helped me hoist my bag over a drystone wall and I got my first injury on the pointy slate but it was just a little cut on my leg.

It’s funny how distances on maps can look so short in the morning and turn out to be so very far by mid-afternoon! After several hours I still had several valleys and hills to negotiate, but I finally got to my destination; Wintecrag Farm.

Altogether I did 17km (or, less impressively, a bit over 10 miles) carrying about 10kg and only one blister to show for it. A good first day!

3Nov2018

Lamai Beach

by Miss Penny Black

I am writing this from home, having discovered that the last two posts I wrote about Lamai (our last stop) have disappeared. This means that several paragraphs of me complaining about Justin Bieber on high (and I mean HIGH) rotation in every hotel, restaurant and bar in Thailand will just have to be done without – sad, I know. It honestly seemed as though some governing body in Thailand had issued the same 10 track CD to every likely establishment in the country and by the end of our three weeks I thought seriously about sticking a fork in my ears.

Lamai Beach

Audio-torture aside, we had a nice time during our last week. Lamai is a beach just south of the more famous Chaweng Beach, which runs down the eastern side of Koh Samui. This was our third trip to the island and we had decided to try Lamai as it seemed a bit quieter – the parade of hawkers, spherical and sunburned eurotrash, and whizzing jet skis of course has it’s charms (in terms of cautionary tales, perhaps) but we’d heard good things about Lamai.

Lovely lush tropical gardens in our resort.

We definitely experienced quiet. In the evenings the beach was almost deserted as it was the low season and some of the bars and restaurants were completely closed. Despite this, our resort (The Pavilion) was at least half full and there were families and groups out on the beach throughout the day. Only one jet ski at a time seemed to be in operation too, so that was also something.

Lamai main street.

A big sign on the beach warned that it was jellyfish season so I did get in the sea a couple of times but tried to keep Luke between myself and the open water.

On our second last night I made the mistake of looking up the kinds of jellyfish and related incidents to be found locally and scared myself out of going back in. Fortunately the hotel pool was perfectly fine – although Luke wasn’t happy that it had not been heated to bath temperatures.

We ate out every night and enjoyed a great number of 70-140 baht cocktails. If you’re heading to the area we highly recommend Pik’s Bar. They have a list of 140 cocktails and they’re all the equivalent of $3 AUD each.

Pik’s Bar

Lea decided Pina Coladas were the best thing since sliced bread and after her first we barely saw her without one in her hand, even at breakfast! Just kidding, of course. We didn’t usually start drinking until we’d spent at least 8 hours reading books on our sun loungers.

Our only activity, apart from eating, swimming, reading, and drinking, was watching the local gang of dogs wrestle each other up and down the beach. A form of entertainment familiar to everyone who has ever been to the coast of Thailand.

We became quite familiar with the pack and one morning I found one of them (who looked a bit like our old dog Penny) asleep on the walkway right outside our room. After that I bought a little packet of dog treats from the 7-11 and handed them out whenever they came near.

We did find a few really lovely places to eat in Lamai, one of which wasn’t Thai (all the Thai places are excellent, mind you) called Emporio Caffè.

The proprietor and chef was an Italian fellow from Rome who made the pasta by hand and shared some of his grappa and limoncello with us. The pasta was outstanding and so of course we went back two nights later. Although it was a very simple cafe it had the typical frescos. If you find yourself in Lamai be sure to go!

Luke and I left Samui on a very early flight and spent a night at the Novotel in Bangkok before a daytime flight back to Melbourne. I ended up with a headache from watching three movies and the entire available catalogue of Big Bang Theory (it’s the show I watch when there’s nothing better to watch) and disembarked at about 8:30pm to find Melbourne airport the busiest we’d ever seen it.

The lady managing the extensive Sky Bus queue told the people in line that the trouble was that the Cox Plate (a prestigious horse race), Pax (a games convention) and a Taylor Swift concert were all happening on the same weekend.

Once we got into the city we discovered that in fact the Taylor Swift concert had just emptied out from the stadium beside the station and there were crowds five deep to get onto the trains. We ended up standing up for the 50 minutes it took to get home and then walked the last kilometre. The guy at the local kebab stand spied us walking past (this was at almost midnight) and asked Luke if we were going hiking.

Arriving home was a bit weird. Last time we’d come back we’d had a house full of people and Penny to greet us. This time it was more like letting ourselves into another Airbnb. Luke had paid for professional cleaners to go through the house before we returned and they’d cleaned some things well – and some things not so well. A lot of our belongings were in boxes as friends had lived in the house while we’d been gone.

We lay down on a mattress in the spare room, turned out the light, and agreed solemnly that really, there’s no place like home.

Pik’s Bar

17Oct2018

The Peak District and Makeney Hall

by Miss Penny Black

Apologies to the handful of people who check the blog with any regularity, I’ve really fallen off the regular-posting bandwagon these last few weeks. Partially because we’ve been lazy and haven’t done a lot of noteworthy things and partly because when there’s other people around I try to be more social. Hopefully I’ll catch up before we get home in a week and a half.

We start at the end of the last post – catching the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool.

After a 4:30am breakfast, the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool disgorges it’s passengers at the cruel hour of 5:30am, which meant we had a long day to fill before booking into our accommodation for that night.

Jess and Luke loved the croissants onboard and we could see why all the truck drivers were virtually spherical. Excellent food and service on the overnight P&O ferry!

We filled our day by first taking a drive to Edale, a little village in the Peak District and well known to me as the start/end of the Pennine Way, England’s most well known long distance trail. Possibly also it’s most grueling too. Not that I’ve done it, but it was nice to take a drive through the gorgeous hills and then stop for a cup of tea at the campsite cafe, once it opened. We were seriously early.

A classic British pub. Hopefully we’ll be back one day during opening hours.

Next we drove to Chatsworth farm house and cafe for a slice of cake and more tea. The range of stuff on sale was very tempting (and pricey) and I bought a few things for Andrew and some tasty treats for us too, including a ginger brack (a type of cake that keeps well) to put in my package of stuff to send home.

Fancy farm shop pies.

After the cafe we took a quick drive through the actual Chatsworth estate but we were all a bit too knackered to be bothered with the entry price and doing much walking around. The weather was glorious though and the building looked magnificent.

Last stop before our hotel was a leisurely walk around Bakewell, a very pretty, touristy and well-kept northern town. We looked through a few shops then made our way to Makeney Hall. As I’d thought the Lake District was too far to drive and our preferred hotel there wasn’t available anyhow and we thought it would be nice to spend one night in a relatively fancy country house/hotel and Makeney Hall looked nice and was in about the right location.

The hotel ended up looking quite nice on the outside but having a somewhat run-down feeling in the interior. Tatty carpet, dirty windows in the restaurant, and the bedrooms were pretty ordinary.

We had booked an afternoon tea and we were the only people in the spacious dining room. The food was nice and the ambience improved once we disconnected the country/pop music playlist on the staff iPad and connected my phone with more suitable classical music. Luckily the staff weren’t fussed.

All in all, not a hotel I’d recommend but we enjoyed taking a walk in the evening and watching the rabbits and squirrels in the garden.

The next day we drove to Cambridge for two nights then spent our last week in London, where we saw a number of plays and had high tea on a bus! More about the next post.

26Sep2018

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park

by Miss Penny Black

We left Harrogate mid morning but our ferry to Ireland didn’t leave Liverpool until 9pm, which left us with quite a few hours to fill in between. I’d seen a few photos of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Instagram and, as it was a nice day, we decided to take a detour.

While there are around 80 sculptures placed around the large grounds, there’s also the main gallery and a chapel that houses exhibits.

The first exhibit we looked at was by an artist called Mister Finch, a local man who made anthropomorphic sculptures of animals from found fabric and other materials. This exhibition was based on a story of his where animals who delivered wishes were allowed their own wishes granted… I think. It was quite enchanting.

The next gallery space had works from a number of artists and all the works had something to do with nature. I particularly liked this one:

At first it looked like a pile of potatoes – which it mostly was. This seemed intriguingly strange and then the nearby gallery guard/explainer told us that the artist had taken a cast of his face then buried it with the potatoes then the potatoes had grown into the shape of his eyes and ears etc. Amazing! The artist then cast those potatoes in bronze and then displayed them with regular potatoes.

You won’t recall this, I’m sure, but in my post about Rome earlier this year I included photos of an artwork that was acacia thorns on canvas. Coincidentally, there was one work by the same artist on display in Yorkshire.

We had a little wander through the grounds but it was a bit windy and so I didn’t take too many photos. Also there were a lot of Henry Moore statues, which I’m not that keen on. I did like this though :

A haha over a haha! Possibly the most elaborate pun I’ve seen all year. I don’t know how many other people would get it… or even if the artist intended it.

There was also a neat iron tree by Ai Weiwei.

This was made by making casts of a bunch of parts of other trees then roughly bolting it together.

The last thing we looked at was inside the chapel on the grounds. An elaborate and ethereal string and paper installation by an Asian artist. Lovely! As the clouds came across the windows the strings would glow or become pale.

We finished off with a very tasty lunch in the cafe then continued on to Liverpool, a city I’d expected to like but perhaps we stopped in the wrong part because it smelled rather bad. We had a few drinks at a very fancy pub then headed to the ferry, ready to start the Irish leg of our adventure.

The YSP certainly knew its way around a pie!

Next: fun times on a rocky ferry crossing then we head to Sligo and Galway.

7Sep2018

High Rigg and Buttermere – Two Walks Near Keswick.

by Miss Penny Black

We arrived in Keswick pretty late in the day after a taxi, two trains and a bus from Cheltenham.

We stopped in at our BnB (The Cartwheel in Blencathra Street) to unload and briefly relax before heading out on a very short walk to Castle Hill.

Despite the fact that it was only about a kilometre away I missed the right lane but we made it eventually to the little dark forest that crowned a small rise near Derwentwater.

As I expected, my lack of long walks or serious hills showed and I was a bit puffed by the time we made it to the top. The nice thing about this time of year is that the school holidays are over so we saw only a few people on the way up and had the top to ourselves.

We took a few photos but it was getting dark so we took a walk down through town to the camping and caravan club where I camped in May and June. I pointed out all the significant spots and hills I’d climbed while Luke humoured me by making noises to indicate he was listening.

When we got to the lake it was getting quite dark and it looked quite moody and gloomy – very different to earlier balmy days. Also the black and white makes it look even more eerie ;-).

We stopped at The Bank Tavern for a drink and shared a chicken kiev. While we haven’t been sharing dinner as often as we should we’re trying to remember to do it now.

We then went to The Dog And Gun, which was packed with dogs – five just in the alcove we were sitting in. We had a piece of apple pie drowning in custard, which made Luke happy, then walked back to the Cartwheel for an early night.

While on the bus that day I’d wrenched my neck and lying in a soft bed seemed to make it worse – by morning I was struggling to move it at all or sit comfortably. I took some nurofen with breakfast, which seems to help but I’m hoping it comes better soon.

The following day I decided that I wanted to walk High Rigg, a hill near Castlerigg Stone Circle and very close to the walk Pete and Deb and I did in June.

We caught the bus as close as we could then walked up the hill and along the ridge. Luke did not enjoy the walk up, but it was pretty! And reasonably dry, too.

As I’d read, there were excellent panoramic views from the top and we followed the ridge for about a kilometre then down the southern end. There was no path marked on my OS map but it was pretty clear where to go.

We only saw one other couple along the way and it was marvellously quiet. The rain that had happened through the night had cleared and only the top of Skiddaw and Blencathra were covered in cloud. We even got a bit of sun on our way down.

The path ended right at a 555 bus stop, which was super handy, so we caught the bus back to Keswick then the 77A to Buttermere to eat our lunch then go for a wander along the lake. While it was perhaps not quite as fine a day as last time I was here, the lack of crowds made up for it.

We found a lovely patch of fly agaric too!

At the southern end we spent a few minutes watching a dog try to pick up a rock out of a stream – the rock was bigger than its head and we watched in amazement as it finally managed to pick the rock up and get it up to the bank.

We caught the bus back to Keswick by 5 and headed straight to the Wainwright pub where we shared a steak and ale pie, Luke agreed it was the best he’d had yet. After we’d finished eating another couple asked if they could share the table and we ended up talking to them for ages. Janice and Steve were from Newcastle and on their yearly holiday to the lakes. They had their immaculately white west highland terrier with them and we talked dogs and walks and travel for a while before Luke and I decided it was getting late and headed back to the Cartwheel.