My little weekend away

I started my rotation last week, but ended up with a 3-day weekend thanks to the New Years Eve holiday.  I wanted to take advantage of the extra time and decided to check out a part of England that was a little further away.  Thanks to my trusty Rick Steves guidebook, I decided the Lake District was it for me.  I made my travel arrangements, booked my room at a cute little bed and breakfast, and set out early Saturday morning.

Since I am car-less here (I wouldn't even drive if I did have a car!), my travel was like this: train->tube->train->bus to Keswick (pronounced Kes-ick).  Since it was a Saturday, I just missed the bus at Penrith to Keswick and had to wait about an hour for the next one.  Luckily, since this is England, there never seems to be a shortage of things to explore just steps away:

This was the ruins of a castle of one of the King Richards.  If you look carefully on the right-hand side of the picture, you can see the top of the train station.  This was just across the road from a busy train station!  And yeah, that's a real-deal moat there.  You can also just make out the silhouettes of kids climbing on the ruins.  What a childhood memory that'll be!  Anyways, after a quick poke about Penrith, I was on the bus headed for Keswick.

Keswick is a part of Cumbria, the Lake District of England.  It's a small town (about 5000) and is quite touristy, but also has a pencil mill (? do you make pencils at a pencil mill?) that is pretty old.  When I got there on New Years Eve, they were having a little market that so many places here have on Saturdays.  I didn't really check it out though, and I wish that I had!  Instead, I went for a walk down to the lake, Derwentwater:

Of course, it was rainy and a little chilly - but such is England.  Here at least people were more outdoorsy and absolutely prepared for whatever would be thrown at them (I actually did see people throwing mud around).  People come here to "walk the fells" as they say.  (I had to google what a fell is (tall hill) and a crag (steep cliff or rock face) to figure out what people were really doing.)  Keswick is also incredibly dog friendly.  A number of the restaurants and shops allowed dogs in, which was sweet.

My second day in Keswick, I did two hikes.  I overshot a little bit on the length, but am glad that I did them for sure.  The first was the Walla Crag hike:

Some beautiful views from the top.  I tried to do a video, but it was so windy that all you can hear is the wind howling!  So instead, here's a video just down from the top of the crag:

The second hike I did was Latrigg fell:

Hiking trails here are very different from those in CO.  They aren't maintained, aren't marked, and 3 people can take 3 ways to go up the same trail.  I bought a little pack of trail guides at the Tourist Information, which I am SO glad I did.  Well worth the 3 quid. 

It was at the top here that I knew I had overdone the miles I wanted to do for the day, but as they say, what goes up must come down.  Which means me!  So the hike down felt much longer than the entirety of the rest of the hikes.  However, the bed and breakfast I stayed at served a full English breakfast which consisted of:

-toast (they don't have wheat toast here, they have brown toast)

-fresh fruit

-sausage

-bacon (which is totally different than our bacon! It's all meat, no fat)

-fried egg

-fried bread (gross.  just gross.)

-mushrooms

-tomato

-hashbrown

So I didn't get hungry until like 6pm that night, even after doing 10+ miles hiking.  While not the healthiest thing, better than getting a hunger pain halfway up a mudfield.  

There were a couple of things that I noted on my trip: people in the countryside are much MUCH friendlier than further south.  When walking in the lanes, people will actually say hi to you (both initiate and return a hi).  However, people are still quite reserved and don't really do a lot of conversing with people they don't know.  Spending time in the b&b at breakfast, each group just stayed within themselves...not talking.  Or talking so quietly I couldn't hear them, which is probably the case.  People are very quiet here.

Additionally, people in the country dress more like I do (very casually).  In London and Crawley, I always feel underdressed, even when I am dressed nicely!  People are very fashionable down south.

Anyway, this was the highlights of my weekend away!  I caught the train back to London, which was so very busy I had to sit outside the "loo" because there were no seats anywhere else on the train!  All part of the experience, though. :)