The Lake District

I mentioned in my last post that I havent had much time at the moment for updating my blog.  Well last weekend my husband and I went for a long weekend 4 night stay at The Lake District, so I thought I would do a quick post to share our adventures.  We both really enjoy staying at the lakes, its so peaceful and beautiful.  We usually stay at a hotel called The Swan Hotel in Newby Bridge which is set along a river that leads into the south of Windermere lake which means there is quite a drive to go to visit most of the lakes but its such a gorgeous hotel we think its worth it.  The first whole day we had there we planned to have a hike upto Easdale Tarn which is roughly an hour and a half to two hours walk to get up to the Tarn.  The walk starts off in Grasmere (the home and burial place of William Wordsworth), over a little stone bridge and up into the hills past a waterfall called Sour Milk Gill then higher still, which was a bit tiring on my legs but worth it when I saw the beautiful tarn surrounded by wilderness.  I first saw Easdale Tarn in a book about the British Isles a few years ago and I just had to see it for myself.

Us just before it got steep :)

Sour Milk Gill

Easdale Tarn

This picture of me was taken high up on a hill to get the whole tarn in the picture as it was quite large.

The second day we planned to do a mountain walk upto Cat Bells.  I read that this is an easy/family walk but it was still tiring and I had to stop a few times to catch my breath.  We parked in Keswick and took the boat over Derwent Water to Hawes End, the start of the Cat Bells walk.  We only had about 4 hours to do it in and get back to the pier in time for the last boat pickup of the day to take us back to Keswick so we didnt have much time for resting.  Once we were up there and reached the peak the view was so beautiful!  We stopped at the top to sit down and eat our lunch along with all the other climbers, took some more photos and headed down the other side for our trek back.  We made it back to Hawes End pier with half an hour to spare :)

The boat ride over to Hawes End.

The Cat Bells summit is the peak on the left.  The walk started on the far right up and along the ridge to the peak on the left, then over the top to the far left of the photo then walking halfway down to the bottom and across to the far right back to the pier.

Almost there. (thats not us in the photo by the way).  You can see the path we came back on in the far left of the photo.

Yey, we made our first ever mountain! 451 metres above sea level.  Very windy and sunny!

The beautiful views of Derwent Water.

In the very distance you can just about make out Bassenthwaite Lake.