The Lake District National Park is a national park full of approximately 94 lakes, though in typical and peculiar English fashion only one of those lakes is actually called "lake", Thus the Lake District actually consists of a single lake (Bassenthwaite Lake) and dozens of meres, waters, and tarns. Go figure.
This is Bowness on Windermere, an example of a lake that is specifically not called a lake. The Lake District requires a lot of input water (rain) to maintain itself, and today the weather obliged. Like the Yorkshire Dales, Lake District farmers have four staple things they grow: grass, sheep, cows, and stone walls.
This is a stone wall. Stone walls are an unpredictable crop. They love to make roads look very not-wide and do not play well with cars.
These are boats for hire in Bowness for rowing on Windermere. Although Gordon was slightly keen on rowing, there were several reasons to not hire these boats. These reasons included: it was wet (it wasn't really raining, we just spent the day inside a cloud), windy, cold, row boats take some effort (my effort no doubt, presumably), and...
.. THIS is the boat that we really wanted to hire. I believe it is "only" doing about 160 miles per hour when I took this photo. Consiton Water (yet another not-lake) is famous for being the site of numerous water speed records in the last half century (with only a few high-profile deaths - who knew making things go hundreds of miles an hour on choppy water is not necessarily a great idea?!). And so I supposed we shouldn't have been surprised to see several boats zipping round the picturesque lake (sorry, "Water") at terrifyingly unnatural speeds.
Oh, you don't believe me? Well how about clicking on that video above. As they do (but really shouldn't say) in England: "'nuff said". The boat carries an "in memory" dedication on its tail, which is all you need to know about the sensibleness of said activity. Incidentally, the boat and its team are thoroughly American.
Here we are having afternoon tea in Grasmere. Afternoon tea consists of tea and one or more scones. To make "afternoon tea" different from "tea and scones" one has to add butter, strawberry jam, and clotted cream. One can think of clotted cream as cream with anything healthy taken out of it. It is an excellent dietary supplement for anyone worried about their low cholesterol level. And it is of course absolutely delightful and quite nearly almost as exciting as watching a bizarre jet boat race inappropriately in circles around Consiton Water.
This is the sign that one can see looking out of the tea room window. We cleverly worked out what the initials stood for by (a) deciphering what the black image is at the top of the sign, (b) thinking of conceptually logical and spatially-appropriate ideas, (c) trying multiple word combinations that matched the image and letters, and (d) asking the waiter who only moderately laughed at us.
And here we in Ouse Bridge House (next to Bassenthwaite Lake... YES, the one and only lake in the Lake District) drinking yet more tea. Drinking lots of tea is good for kidney stones. Or gives you kidney stones. I don't remember which. But I suspect we will soon find out.
This is Bowness on Windermere, an example of a lake that is specifically not called a lake. The Lake District requires a lot of input water (rain) to maintain itself, and today the weather obliged. Like the Yorkshire Dales, Lake District farmers have four staple things they grow: grass, sheep, cows, and stone walls.
This is a stone wall. Stone walls are an unpredictable crop. They love to make roads look very not-wide and do not play well with cars.
These are boats for hire in Bowness for rowing on Windermere. Although Gordon was slightly keen on rowing, there were several reasons to not hire these boats. These reasons included: it was wet (it wasn't really raining, we just spent the day inside a cloud), windy, cold, row boats take some effort (my effort no doubt, presumably), and...
.. THIS is the boat that we really wanted to hire. I believe it is "only" doing about 160 miles per hour when I took this photo. Consiton Water (yet another not-lake) is famous for being the site of numerous water speed records in the last half century (with only a few high-profile deaths - who knew making things go hundreds of miles an hour on choppy water is not necessarily a great idea?!). And so I supposed we shouldn't have been surprised to see several boats zipping round the picturesque lake (sorry, "Water") at terrifyingly unnatural speeds.
Oh, you don't believe me? Well how about clicking on that video above. As they do (but really shouldn't say) in England: "'nuff said". The boat carries an "in memory" dedication on its tail, which is all you need to know about the sensibleness of said activity. Incidentally, the boat and its team are thoroughly American.
Here we are having afternoon tea in Grasmere. Afternoon tea consists of tea and one or more scones. To make "afternoon tea" different from "tea and scones" one has to add butter, strawberry jam, and clotted cream. One can think of clotted cream as cream with anything healthy taken out of it. It is an excellent dietary supplement for anyone worried about their low cholesterol level. And it is of course absolutely delightful and quite nearly almost as exciting as watching a bizarre jet boat race inappropriately in circles around Consiton Water.
This is the sign that one can see looking out of the tea room window. We cleverly worked out what the initials stood for by (a) deciphering what the black image is at the top of the sign, (b) thinking of conceptually logical and spatially-appropriate ideas, (c) trying multiple word combinations that matched the image and letters, and (d) asking the waiter who only moderately laughed at us.
And here we in Ouse Bridge House (next to Bassenthwaite Lake... YES, the one and only lake in the Lake District) drinking yet more tea. Drinking lots of tea is good for kidney stones. Or gives you kidney stones. I don't remember which. But I suspect we will soon find out.
One point of correction: the walls in Scotland are made of the skulls of the English... and the Romans... and the Irish... and pretty much everyone else whom we didn't invite over except the Vikings, who liked US so much that they stayed, and renamed the far north of our Highlands "Sutherland". Wacky Vikings.
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