Lake District

Went up to have a look at Penrith Castle; we sort of had to didn’t we? (For those not in the know, Penrith is the name of Gus' father's farm) It wasn’t very inspiring – built by Richard I before he became king and not used a heck of a lot since! It’s just a few walls now but at least it was free and the sun was shining and we can now say we’ve seen Penrith Castle.

Next we drove down towards Keswick (pronounce Kesick – don’t know why they bother with the w). On the way we stopped at another stone circle, Castlerigg. Amazing view from this one, was put here by Neolithic people they think, as in cavemen, so it’s been here a while. No spooky feelings around this one, possibly because of all the school kids sitting all over it, enough to take the atmosphere away – also no trodden path around the inner circle or fireplace in the middle so probably not used by druids recently.

From there we biked into Keswick – was down a nice steep hill and only a short ride brought us to a carpark in the centre of town. We asked a lady on a bike if the path did lead to Keswick and she was the one that corrected our pronunciation then explained that there is another way back, not as steep, so looked forward to that. Had a good look around Keswick, a thriving market in the middle of town, had some lunch at a cafe and watched the people go past for a while. So many people have their dogs with them, all over England. We really like it and most of the dogs are really well behaved, obviously used to strolling through busy streets and sitting outside cafes, very urbanised. Went for a stroll by the lake, the lakes are very pretty around here (hence “The Lake District” I suppose!). The sun was shining so nice to get out and about, a cold wind still though, so jackets required. Gus thought it looked like a good skiing lake but was disappointed to see that the boats only had little motors so are obviously more for fishing/sightseeing. I don’t imagine that it gets warm enough for skiing for very long anyway and if it did (and skiing were allowed) I can only imagine how horribly congested the lake would get. This is still the shoulder season and it is as busy as Taupo in the middle of summer! From the town we biked along an ex-railway track complete with an old station and small viaducts. We then took a short-cut up through some paddocks on a public walking track – these are everywhere here, until we got back to the road with the stone circle on it. The Enterprise was waiting faithfully for us, but it was still a steep ride up the last bit of the hill to get to her. We got back to camp – Gus went for another ride (our one was clearly not hard enough for him) and I had a shower and collapsed with a red wine, and decided to catch up on this blog.

Oh, forgot to mention we did our washing this morning, first time in a while we’ve been staying 2 nights, so time to do towels and sheets – the machines in all the camping grounds we’ve been to cost 3.50 pounds ($7-$8) per load and we had 2 loads worth – actually 3 loads worth because it turned out the machines aren’t all that big either. I wasn’t shelling out for 3 though so did the last load by hand – never again. Made me appreciate the joys of washing machines – especially the spinning part!! Ok for small items but we didn’t have many of those this time, Gus lent his strength but even then nowhere near as effective as a spin dryer – then the dryer costs 1 pound for a 30 minute cycle – ended up using 3, then finishing off the remainder on our little drying rack and draping them round the campervan – an expensive exercise and what a hassle. We do have a line but nowhere really to string it and didn’t want to bring the tone of the neighbourhood down too much! I’ll appreciate our big washing machine and clothes line when I get home!