Doves

In the evening we went out for dinner with friends. We met up at the Villa Columbina next to Dove Cottage (well it IS Dove Cottage if you are 2000 years old :-)

It was our first time at this Italian restaurant and I was extremely impressed. We got excellent Italian food at reasonable prices and service that was absolutely immaculate.

Children are made more than welcome – they are treated like adults and this seriously impressed 10 year old TT. They also get child sized portions of main dishes if they want and doggy bags too. It was a 20 mile round trip, but well worth it to find a restaurant where they have such a complete but apparently natural understanding of what represents excellent customer service and value for money for families.

We’ll be back!

Ospreys

On Wednesday we went up to Keswick to see the ospreys at Bassenthwaite. Last year they nested across the lake from the viewing area, but this year they’ve moved house and you can get a lot closer. We just missed seeing the male bringing in a fish, but shortly after we saw Mrs No Ring flying and her mate took to the skies again shortly afterwards. It was quite simply magical. These birds are just so majestic that even a glimpse is worth the wait. Unfortunately there is as yet no camera on the nest, and although the foliage around has been cut, you can only get a glimpse when they are sitting.

Bank Holiday Blues

But for us in the Lakes it was the sky and not our mood! The North had a great weekend for weather (although looking at the BBC weather bulletins you’d never have know as they seem fixated by the weather South of Birmingham!)

A Bewildered Bride

So last week I was up at the lodge doing some work that needed a bit of seclusion.

I woke up early and took the dog for a walk up around Dubbs reservoir on a clean crisp late spring morning. It was so quiet when I stopped walking and stood fro a moment – all I could hear was the noise of the birds and the sheep. The sheep are SO LOUD. I never thought I’d write that but everything is relative and the sheep were by far the noisiest things around.

Halfway along the path I came across a wagon full of nettles – so odd that it needed a photograph!



And all along the walk there were the hawthorns, decked with may blossom. One blown over by the wind lay like a bewildered bride against a backdrop of the new green.

And all around the goldfinches swooped, the lambs leaped and the calves watched me walk past, so seriously, as though they knew the reason why.

Spring in the Lake District fills you with such constant wonder. You’d have to have no soul not to be affected by it!

Green Tourism

An interesting article on the BBC news web site today

"Leo Hickman, the Guardian's green guru, has just written a book, the Last Call, questioning if our love of travel can be sustained.

Predicting that surging oil prices might put paid to budget flights anyway, he advocates a "Goldilocks approach" to tourism: a three-year cycle of - flight one year, Europe overland the next, and holidaying in Britain the next."

We did it!

Well we took two days away on Tuesday and Wednesday to attend the annual Cumbria Tourism Awards as we had entered for the "Tourism Website of the Year" award.

We had a super time at the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal where the awards were hosted. We had a lovely view from our room and the service was impeccable.

We had lunch at The Watermill at Ings - one of the traditional Lakeland pubs where they serve bar food and great beer without any airs and graces - highly recommended!

In the afternoon we went for a lovely walk up Jenkyn Crag. The ransomes (wild garlic) are out and the scent was almost overpowering.


We were up against some very stiff competition for the web site award from 3 very professional outfits - Mullin Design, English Lakes Hotels and South Lakeland Parks who own Limefitt Park.

Nobody was more surprised than me when they read out the winner's name and it was US!!

The web site has taken up a lot of my time, and it was fantastic to see the effort rewarded like this. It was also really gratifying to see the way in which the other competitors were so generous with their congratulations!



We rounded off the trip with a visit to Levens Hall which was looking stunning in the spring sunshine. Well worth a visit!

What a weekend!

At last the weather has turned and we had a lovely warm weekend. We made full use of it and spent Saturday afternoon sailing on Windermere.

Well, as Captain "Birdseye" Mike observed it was more of a float than a sail as there was no wind, but there aren't many more beautiful places to float than halfway down Windermere!

A couple of pints at The Mortal Man and then home for a barbecue to round off a lovely day.






Next morning we took TT to Windermere to do some skateboarding at the skate park and then had a picnic down by Windermere and went kayaking.

I'm not sure about those ripples on the water now!



















Mid afternoon the weather turned quite dramatically and we drove home through an amazing thunderstorm with forked lightning everywhere and rolling crashes of thunder right on top of us.

What a great way to forget work for 2 days!

Walking

The QI section of the Telegraph recently had an article about walking.

It pointed out that a darts player can walk up to 15 miles in the course of a tournament (and that's presumably just on the return trips to the bar).

It also quoted St Augustine "solivitur amnbulando" - It is solved by walking. How many times have you gone out for a walk with something troubling you, only to find that by the time you get back you have resolved the problem and know how you will deal with it?

Nice weather for ducks

It has rained a bit of late and even the ducks have been taking refuge on the roofs! Still - it has been said that "There's no such thing as bad weather in the Lake District - Just the wrong sort of clothing".

Steaming!

Today we have had hail and rain and sun - a real mixture. When the sun came out a few minutes ago the roofs of the lodges all began to steam - it looked quite surreal.

New toy

Yesterday I got a new toy to play with - a GPS that I got to do geocaching. Geocaching is a fairly new sport which involves finding your way to a location which you have the map co-ordinates for and then hunting for a small item (often like an old 35mm film tube). The nearest cache we could get details of was just down by the church in Troutbeck, so we trooped off looking a bit conspicuous holding what looked like a large yellow mobile phone. TT was very excited to find the cache and hopefully we have found a new way to winkle the limpet away from it's secure position by the TV!

Wordsworth's Daffodils and Aira Force

Tuesday was glorious spring day so we went up to Ullswater to seek out Wordsworth's daffodils. The story goes that he was walking back down Ullswater with his sister Dorothy when they came to Glencoyne Bay (just past Aira Force going South). Dorothy recorded the event in her diary and it is thought that it was the inspiration for the famous poem. They are certainly very beautiful.

We then went further up the lake to the North and walked up to Aira Force. On the way we passed proof that money can grow on trees. Well almost. This tree which is on the way up to the waterfal from the National Trust car park is studded with coins left there by passing visitors.

The waterfall itself was in full force and it was suprisingly busy - well OK it was school holidays and a lovely day.

There was lovely view of Ullswater on the way back. The Lake District looks different as the seasons change, and these rather spare and dramatic views will soon give way to a countryside covered in the new green.

More snow but some new lives!

The weather this week doesn't know whether to be Winter or Spring as you can see from this picture of the Kirkstone end of the valley.

It's been very cold and they are forecasting further frost and wintery showers.

Spring is definitely on it's way though as we could tell from the number of new lambs. There's nothing unusual in seeing new born lambs at this time of year in the Lake District of course.




What was slightly more unusual was to see a new born calf at Long Green Head farm. It looked as though it had only just been born and that if we had happened along a moment or two earlier we might even have witnessed the birth. It was stumbling around trying to work out where to feed for a minute or two before finally latching on to it's mum.

A bit further along we saw Nature's answer to the weaker new arrivals soaring around above us. Troutbeck has a fairly big population of buzzards and they can often be seen flying around over the fells.

Cumbria Tourism - New Eco Marketing Initiative

We were very excited to learn of some of the recent locally focused marketing initiatives from Cumbria Tourism.

One of the most interesting is the W.O.O.L. (Windermere Opportunities from Ovine Literacy) scheme that is being seamlessly woven into the fabric of the local eco-tourism marketing strategy.

By teaching sheep to form basic letter structures as they graze it will be possible to create environmentally friendly mobile advertisements that blend into the local scenery.

For a small fee you will therefore be able to have an advert for your business on a Lakeland fell side of your choice. There have been some teething troubles and sheep are notoriously slow learners. Consequently the scheme will be limited to the display of initials in the early stages, but it is hoped that full word adverts will be available before the end of the year.

Preliminary tests in Troutbeck are showing encouraging results. Here is the Windermere Lodge advertisement on its way to being fed at 9.a.m this morning.

Easter - Wind and Snow

The bank holiday weekend brought us a mix of weather. First we had tremendous gales that shook the site on Friday night. We could feel the lodge trembling at times and the people with a tourer beneath this tree must have been rather thankful that it fell away from them during the night!

On Saturday we had few flurries of sleet and a pretty hard hail storm whilst we were out doing the Ing Bridge walk.

You can see the hail moving in here as we are leaving the park. It really stings your face as you walk into a North wind carrying these tiny but sharp balls of ice

We woke up on Sunday morning to 4 inches of snow which transformed the park into a beautiful, white landscape.

Here is Troutbeck from the bridge



This is Windermere Lodge at about 6:30 a.m.

I got up early so that I could get the picture without too many tyre tracks and footprints!

Here is the Easter bunny
that we made

















and here is the River Pool looking towards Troutbeck.

What an ACE weekend we had!

Spring is in the air at last!

The new season has started and we visited the lodge for the first time this weekend.

The last snowdrops are giving way to the first daffodils.

Things started as they had ended in January - Friday night saw torrential rain and the by Saturday morning the beck was swollen and rushing past at a frightening rate!

By Sunday morning though things had changed and waking up to some sunshine I decided to go for an early morning walk with Suki up past Dubs reservoir. This one of her favourites as she can run off the lead along the top as the sheep are normally safely behind the walls. Striking out at 8 in the morning the weather down the valley looked quite ominous with dark clouds brooding over High Street and Ill Bell.

Looking in the other direction towards Windermere though the picture was altogether more bright and optimistic.

Walking along it struck me that it’s been a while since we’ve heard so many sheep. I think they were all concentrated in a few spots as the farmers had been out on their quad bikes leaving fodder for them.

Suki never seems very interested by them – even when we come across the ones that have strayed onto the paths. This is something of a relief as lambing will be starting soon, along with the reports of angry farmers with shot guns and little sympathy for dog owners who let their pets get too near their sheep.

I on the other hand love looking at sheep and find the noise that make curiously relaxing.

A bit further on we saw our old friends the Highland cattle. I think these are the same ones that we sometimes see on the field over the beck from the lodge. Now Suki is very interested by these.

I wonder what it is about the two species of animal that provokes such a different reaction in dogs.

By the end of the walk the morning had brightened up and we had our usual beautiful view of Lake Windermere.

As tonight is supposed to be the worst storm for many years I was probably quite lucky to be able to enjoy such a lovely walk today. It shows that sometimes you have to seize the moment to get the best out of the Lakes.

In Rainbows

It seems to have rained all year so far! One thing I do notice though is that you get a lot of beautiful views as a result up here. The rain actually suits the landscape if that makes any sense. This misty view is taken from the dog field at the bottom end of the park.

Later the same day we went to Ambleside and the sun came out briefly giving us yet another stunning rainbow. They never seem quite so vivid on the photos I take of them as they are in real life!

Anyway - don't let anyone tell you that there is going to be a drought this year!

Happy New Year

We had a fantastic New Year up at Limefitt! The party was completed by the firework display at the Mortal Man at midnight. Well done Nigel!

It's been a great year, even though the weather, which was so promising at Easter made the rest of the year a bit dismal!

In spite of this our guests all seem to have had a great time, judging from the visitor's book.

Here's a picture that sums up the year for me! Beautiful but wet!

End of the year

Well in spite of some pretty wet weather we managed some pleasant walks in December. Just before Christmas we had great fun on
a cold day. The picture on the left is a plant taken through a sheet of ice that TT picked up. His idea to take the picture.




We also saw some lovely green lichen on a dry stone wall, but this picture doesn't really do it justice - it was electric green!






We saw a beautiful view of boats on Windermere but it was so still that I can't imagine that they were having as much fun as we were!

Aira Force

After Saturday's incessant rain (that's where the Lakes come from!) Sunday was a much better day, so we headed off to Aira Force - it's a lovely walk but it gets a bit busy in summer, with the coach loads of ladies wearing high heels :-)

We had a lovely stroll up the beck and had to stop the kids from falling in at various points above crashing 40 foot drops. Theye were all the more spectacular due to the recent heavy rain.

On the one hand I'm surprised that there isn't some H&S rule that says they have to put fences up. On the other I am glad that we have to show a bit of responsibility ourselves, even if it does mean screaming from 30 yards at a child about to try to cross the beck above a big fall on slippy stones "cos it looks dead easy". Thankfully, we all made it back without any mishaps having had a great picnic.

We even made it past the pub at Dockray without stopping.