Lakes District

Ferry across Lake Windermere

Tuesday morning we set off for Lake Windermere, only 8 miles or so.  The lakes are all set in their individual valleys, surrounded by varying hills.  They are all very picturesque, and have been developed over the last 100 years into tourist meccas, partly for their natural beauty and partly for their historical associations. 

Steamer on Lake Windermere

 

 

By coming in September, we are avoiding the worst of the traffic, but it will still be an interesting juggling of compromises, because we are, of course, tourists, and we want to see many of the historical sights, but we also want to avoid crowds and commercialism.  When we reached the lake, at Bowness-on-Windermere, we found a car park in order to take a ferry across the lake at its narrowest point.  It is possible to take the car on the ferry, but we went as walkers.  Our goal was Hilltop House, where Beatrix Potter lived for many years.  Scenes in her books are drawn from many actual places in the Lakes District.

Footpath to Near Sawry with blackberries

It is about a mile hike up hill from the ferry to Near Sawry where her house is, so we felt like we were definitely getting our exercise.  It took an hour up but only a half hour down.  Sometimes we walked on a footpath, sometimes in the road.  There were blackberries along the way to sustain us.  The village is very cute, and the house and gardens well preserved.  It was a timed entry ticket, so we had time to eat lunch at an Inn next door – mushroom soup and bread.  Soup and bread has become the standard lunch as it seems to be reliably vegetarian and inexpensive. 

Hilltop House

Also the weather has turned cooler with passing showers, so hot food is appreciated.  Beatrix Potter was well aware of her popularity by the time she died, and she willed her house and a number of other properties to the National Trust.  She was very specific about how the house should look and the furniture arranged.  By our standards, it is small and dark.  In the garden we actually saw a rabbit, so that was fun.

Typical Near Sawry building

After our walk back down to the ferry, we checked out Blackwell House, an Arts and Crafts House.  We had lovely scones in their tea room, and I had hot chocolate, and we looked around their gift shop, which had lots of crafts by current artists, but we decided not to go in – too expensive and not really something that interests us. 

Lake Windermere in distance

We took a really back way home over a hilltop which gave us a great view of Lake Windermere.  The next day I saw a painting from almost our viewpoint.  I have started to enjoy driving on these narrow hill roads.  Luckily, there is very little traffic, because it still seems pretty narrow when you meet a car coming from the opposite direction.  When we got home, we had time to take a nice walk down the lane here.

Dove Cottage

Wednesday, we drove north to Grasmere and Dove Cottage where William Wordsworth lived for 8 years with his sister Dorothy and then his wife Mary, plus a couple of friends (Coleridge and De Quincey), and eventually 4 children, until they decided they needed a bigger house.  Again, the rooms were small by modern standards.  At least here they had coal fires going so it was easier to imagine how the house felt.  Wordsworth had to find himself some privacy in order to write away from the domestic busyness. 

Beatrix Potter Gallery

On the other hand, he also liked to do a lot of the gardening, and wasn’t afraid of physical work.  Everyone would walk miles to visit friends.  There is a quite decent museum next to the house with interesting information about the poet and the Lakes.  There was an exhibit about a project to try and reproduce by photograph many watercolor pictures of the Lakes.  Often, the photographer could get quite close, but other times trees had grown up since.  You could get a good idea of when the painter was trying to be more dramatic, and when he was being accurate. 

Coniston Waters

From there we drove over the Coniston Waters to the town of Hawkshead, where the Beatrix Potter Gallery occupies the law offices once used by her husband.  They had an exhibit of her original drawings for Peter Rabbit, published 110 years ago in 1902.  Her original, self-published book was a little longer and had more pictures than the published version.  Hawkshead is sort of stuck in time as a white washed quaint village for Beatrix Potter fans to shop in, much more than where Hilltop House is, probably because it is big enough to have succumbed to the lure of easy tourist money. 

View near our cottage

 

We took the scenic route home around Lake Coniston.  We stopped at another stately house, Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin, but again we decided not to go in, but only wandered through the gardens down to the Lake.  For Swallows and Amazon fans, I can now say that the lake in the book is a composite of Coniston and Windermere.  The shape fits Coniston, and the river coming into it, and the mountain nearby, but the islands exist in Windermere.  It was a pretty drive around the lake.

Our cottage is in stone building on left

Wednesday evening we ate out at a pub about a mile away.  There was a very local crowd standing around drinking at the bar.  We sat at a nearby table and enjoyed the ambiance and the food.

St. Mary's Church near cottage

Crosthwaite farm viewed from cottage