Day 7- The Lake District

As I assumed, it was a long night of trying to sleep through the sounds of the bars across the street. Luckily, the sun streaming into the window next to my bed helped get me up. I figured I'd take the early train so I wouldn’t have to change trains and I could get lunch in the lovely town of Windermere. On my way to the station, a guy stopped me and asked me where Chatsworth House was, and I was fairly sure that that house is not even in Manchester, unless I heard him wrong. As an ode to my previous trip to the Lake District, I got a hot chocolate and a ham and cheese croissant, the same breakfast I had last year. The train was surprisingly crowded and I wished I had booked an assigned seat online.

Train coming in to Windermere

View from the train

When I arrived in Windermere, I took a stroll through town and went into some cute shops, which included a kitchen store that had lots of cake and cupcake decorations that I had to restrain myself from buying. I returned to the tourist center where I ate my croissant and waited for my tour. After a while it started to get a bit chilly with the wind they had in the forecast, good thing I brought both jackets! At 12 o’clock our tour guide, Malcolm, picked us up in the 12-person van and we headed off on our journey.

The town of Windermere, behind the phone booth is the restaurant I had dinner at last year and also on this trip

I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get much time as Wray Castle as I remember having last time, and Malcolm didn’t point out the monument that Beatrix Potter had put up in honor of her fiancé who had died. I did my best to recreate some of the selfies I took on the last trip, and in doing so, I actually wore the same outfit as I did last time I visited. For those of you who don’t know who Beatrix Potter is, shame on you! She is the woman who wrote and illustrated the Peter Rabbit books.

Wray Castle 

View from Wray Castle

Trying out the zoom on my camera, I can say I am quite pleased with it

Recreation of last year's selfie- 2015

Last year's selfie- 2014 

Our second stop was Hill Top, my favorite place in the Lake District and former home to Beatrix Potter (see actually lived across the street and used Hill Top mostly for working). I actually found a way into the garden this time that I hadn’t noticed last time, which I was very happy about. It was just as beautiful as I remembered, even more so when the sun made an appearance on a rather cloudy day. After pillaging the gift shop, I went back to the bus, and with the two other people who elected to not go inside the house we got an early start to head to Hawkshead. 
*I am not going to caption all of the following photos, they are either the house at Hill Top or part of the Hill Top gardens (yes, that includes the lamb) unless otherwise stated. Just enjoy the images...

A home across from Hill Top featured in one of Beatrix Potter's stories

The home where Beatrix Potter actually lived

    

A bit of the inside of Hill Top

A post box featured in one of Beatrix Potter's books (took this from the bus)

We had almost 2 hours in Hawkshead, which is a lot of time for such a small town, but I decided to make the most of it. I started by walking by the grammar school where William Wordsworth attended as a boy and made my way up to the top of the hill on which sits a church and cemetery. It was really windy up on the hill so I quickly headed down and went inside the church. The church wasn’t really anything too special as far as churches go, so I made my way back down the hill to look in some shops to see what kind of Peter Rabbit goodies I could find. I was thankful for my long allotment of time in the town because it allowed me to go into the Beatrix Potter gallery, which is in the old building from where her husband, William Hellis, worked as a lawyer. The gallery had many of her original drawings for the books as well as other sketches and drawing she had done that were no published. It was really fascinating! The images in the book are almost the exact likeness of the actual drawings. It is crazy how detailed they were! Apparently Beatrix wasn’t very confident at drawing people in her books so there were spots where you could see she had painted on a different piece of paper and pasted it over the original image. After all the excitement I just had to stop for lunch, I found what I think was the tourist center where they had some nice, warming carrot and orange soup with a rye bread roll.

The school where William Wordsworth attended

St. Michael & All Angels Church in Hawkshead

Beatrix Potter Gallery

Found a wishing well!

My soup and roll

Next on our tour was Tarn Hows, probably my second favorite spot in the Lake District. Apparently originally the lake below was originally three different lakes that the family who owned the land had flooded by building a small dam and made it one lake. It’s nothing too special, just a really nice view, especially when the weather is nice. It would’ve been a lovely place for a picnic if not for the dog poop everywhere. I also added a few videos I took from the tour on the bus so you could get to experience the trip with me.

Just arriving at Tarn Hows (I am fairly certain)

just another zoom test success!

little bit of sun

Before our final stop we passed by the location of the Hill Top in the Miss Potter film, Yew Tree Farm. We then moved on to our last stop, a boat cruise of Lake Windermere. I was pretty disappointed because the last time we did a boat tour on lake Coniston which was a smaller boat (about 30 people could fit) and it was easy to see the water and down to the bottom of the lake because the water was so clear. That tour also let out near a small garden that had a colorful bunch of azaleas including purple and orange ones! The tour of Lake Windermere was about a 100+ person ferry-like boat that let out on a tourist-filled boating area. What made it less than spectacular was being stuck in the middle of a bachelorette party who were probably drunk and being really loud and annoying.

Yew Tree Farm

Lake Windermere

Testing out my zoom again on one of the fancy houses on the lake 

Wray Castle from the lake

The Bachelorette party

A little more sun to end the tour

After the cruise, we headed back to the starting point to end the tour. I picked up a “Lake District” magnet at the visitor center and then went to dinner at the same restaurant where I went last time I was there. After eating I headed back to the train station to bid farewell to the lovely Lake District. I tried to nap on the long ride back to Manchester, but noisy Asians sat all around me. Finally, when the got off I thought I would have some peace, but then a large group of noisy British people showed up. Apparently they had been thrown off a bus by the police for calling the bus driver “Akon,” and the police put them on the train. Another story was that their bus was too crowded, but either way they were not happy people. After finally being rid of the noisy folk, I bought an eye mask and earplugs for the night at the shop in the station; I was not going to let the partiers get the best of me that night!