November is birthday season in the Lovett family – Carolyn, Jack and Anna all having birthdays within 10 days.
With Carolyn and Anna both having birthdays ending with “0” we decided to make a big deal of it and have a weekend away in the Lake District to celebrate. So, having opened presents and had some flowers delivered from Scott’s sisters, we packed ourselves into the trusty Picasso (it’s important to note we don’t have the racing special) after school on Friday and headed off into the wild black yonder - it gets dark around 4pm at this time of year.
We headed up to Grimsby, hung a left towards Leeds, where we stopped at a motorway diner for birthday dinner - toasted sandwiches and coffee for us, KFC for the kids and it cost more than it would have if we had gone to our local pub for dinner! An hour or so further on and we were at the Sundial Guesthouse in Kendal, a lovely guesthouse right on the main drag about 10 minutes walk from the town centre.
After a leisurely cooked English breakfast, we headed for Windermere, but took a wrong turn and ended up taking the scenic route through Crosthwaite. And it was actually a very scenic route! At Windermere we spent some time looking through the World of Beatrix Potter, which was absolutely amazing with recreations of all the Peter Rabbit stories. We were all quite taken with it. We followed this up with a cream tea in their cafe, served by the first Australian we have encountered over here, apart from people we already knew in Australia.
We then donned our wet weather gear and started walking up Orrest Head, which gives spectacular views over lake Windermere. The rain stopped just before we reached the top, so we had a decent look at the view. At least we did for about 2 minutes, when the cloud started closing in below us.
So back on with the wet weather gear and we headed back to Windermere where we had a very yummy afternoon tea at Lazy Daisy’s Lakeland Kitchen and looked through some shops before heading back to Kendal. After a lot of searching around for somewhere reasonable and family-friendly we stopped for dinner at The Miles Thompson, which was very family-friendly, has good food and, most importantly, delicious desserts.
Sunday morning we stopped for a coffee and quick look around the beautiful village of Ambleside, headed up to Kirkstone Pass (it was fog-bound for us, but can look like this) then spent a couple of hours driving through the Yorkshire Dales back home.
The Dales were beautiful – we stopped off at an art gallery which was having an open day kind of thing, serving everyone with fruit mince pies and mulled wine both warmed). Carolyn got a nice print as a birthday present there. We also stopped at Aysgarth in Wensleydale (that’s where they make Wallace’s favourite cheese) to look at the falls and to have afternoon tea at the Mill Race Teashop. Lovely. The teashop is right next to the old Yore Mill which, while no longer a working mill, still has water pouring through it.
All in all it was a really good time away in a very scenic part of England – we’ll go back once it recovers from the floods that come the weekend after we were there.
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Thanks Scott. Great descriptions, I could almost picture being there in your travels. Sounds like it was a great birthday time. Hope your dear wife is getting used to being that ripe ol' age of a year ending in a zero :-)
ReplyDeleteIs James Herriot's Vet Practice still in existence? Would have been lovely in the Yorkshire Dales
ReplyDeleteHi Scott and Carolyn, I didn't know you were in England! A long holiday? We were there in July and thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Lakes District and Kirkstone Pass - where it sounds like we experienced very similar things. Much better this time than when we were there 18 years ago in winter - so foggy we couldn't see a thing. Blessings to you all, love, Jillian Pryor
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