Wednesday, August 10th, 2011: Hawkshead and Coniston
Bob: Our B&B was blissfully quiet, which helped me sleep nearly around the clock; in fact, Monika had to rouse me at 8:00 a.m. because our breakfast was scheduled for 8:30 and she knew I didn't want to miss a meal! Our "Full English" breakfast included English bacon (ham), fried tomato, fried mushrooms, sausages, and an egg, poached in my case. For "dessert" we had toast with some really good French jam that used unsweetened grape juice as a filler, and it was all washed down with several cups of lovely tea! Thus fortified we drove off to see the sights. I was immediately reminded of the intricacies of driving on the single-lane rural roads of England (and Ireland, and Scotland) when I had a head-on encounter with a big Mercedes as I was attempting to head over to the village of Hawkshead. When that happens, one of the two vehicles simply has to back up. First we both stopped dead and stared at each other, kind of like a Mexican standoff except we were both in our cars and presumably otherwise unarmed. After waiting a few seconds, I recalled a slight widening of the road near farm gate 100 yards back, so I decided that I should be the one to back up. That was a fine and perhaps even noble decision in principle, but in practice it was the Devil's own to carry out. There I was sitting on the wrong side of the car, steering and shifting with the wrong hands, trying to look back over the wrong shoulder, and trying to back up on the wrong side of the road! I ultimately zig-zagged my way backwards, running off the road both to the left and to the right, before I finally reached the farm gate where I swerved in and stopped (on the right, that is the wrong, side of the road), heaving a huge sigh of relief. The Mercedes had just enough room to squeeze by on my left which probably made him feel rather uncomfortable, but I was way past caring by that point. Later that day Monika reported the speed limit for those country lanes was 60 mph and I was incredulous--actually driving 60 mph on those roads would, in my opinion, be suicidal. As it turned out, I never got over 30 mph or out of third gear for the entire day of driving, and that reminded me of my first week driving in Scotland during Wanderung 21. |
Monika: We woke up in the morning to rain. Not that it surprised me, since the forecast I had looked at had said it might rain. But first it was time for a nice English breakfast, a fry-up. I had scrambled eggs, bacon - the English kind -, mushrooms and toast with marmalade. A good start to any day. Since we both were still a little tired, we decided to spent a few minutes in our nice room catching up on the journal before heading out. The night before we had looked at several different walks, but with the rain pouring down we decided to just look at a few "Picturesque Villages". The first of these was Hawkshead. It was south of our B&B along the one land road. And true to form, as soon as we got on the road, another car came from the opposite direction. So Bob backed up to the next wider spot trying to avoid the stone hedges on either side. After a few miles we finally came to a "major" road that at least had two marked lanes, although the lanes were awfully narrow and twisty with, you guessed it, stone walls on the side. The speed limit was a rather optimistic 60 mph. But we did make it to Hawkshead without major problems. |
Bob: Continuing on my merry way through the pounding rain and hoping desperately for no Close Encounters Of The Traffic Kind, I snaked my way through the countryside to Hawkshead, which was billed on our map as a "Picturesque Village". Beatrix Potter, of "Peter Rabbit" fame, had lived in the area, so of course some of the shops had rabbit themes in their advertisements and merchandise. Not my type of thing, really, but even aside from that the village truly was picturesque in that the old stone buildings were cleverly built by real craftsmen and blended in beautifully with the backdrop of the natural landscape. At one of the several gift shops in town we found packets of maps of walks in the Lake District for £ 2.25 each and bought the ones for walks around Ambleside near our B&B, around Langsdale, and around Hawkshead, thinking that was the general area of interest on this trip. It had been raining quite hard while we ambled around Hawkshead, so when we saw a sign for an old grammar school we decided to stop in as it would at least get us out of the rain. That turned out to be fortuitous as the school dated back to 1585 and had been established by a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I! What looked to be the original charter was framed up on one wall and it was in amazingly good shape. |
Monika: At Hawkshead we parked in the official car park, that charged official money, £ 1.80 for 1 hour. Since we thought with all this rain we would not stay long so we opted for one hour ticket. But after looking into a couple of stores, we came to a charming old schoolhouse. The school had been chartered in 1585 by Queen Elizabeth I and was renowned as one of the best schools in the North-west of England. Students from the town could go for free, but most students lodged either with the headmaster or in town and had to pay a fee. School hours were from 6AM to 5PM with a 2 hour lunch break. |
Bob: The school's main claim to fame was that Wordsworth, the famous British poet, had attended school there and even carved his name in one of the benches! That is not as bad as it sounds as the boys were all issued special pen knives for carving the quill pens they had to use to write their daily lessons, and the use of the knives for carving other objects, while not officially encouraged, was basically tolerated. Since the average school day was from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a two-hour lunch break in between, there was plenty of time for the boys to engage in decorating the school benches! At the end of our tour we also purchased some old style school writing plates and pens for our grandchildren as well as a couple of bookmarks for ourselves. |
Monika: The interior showed samples of the desks from the early years and from later ones. The desks had a lot of names carved into them, which was neither encouraged nor discouraged. The English poet William Wordsworth and his brothers went to this school and you could still see his name carved into one of desks. The school could accommodate up to 90 students: roughly 60 aged 8-12 students downstairs and 30 or so older students upstairs. They were taught Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, but most talk was in Latin. We could go upstairs, where they even had the official charter of the school and a lot of information on it. One display case was a very detailed description on how to make a nib out of a large feather using the ubiquitous student pen knife. |
Bob: Having spent so much time gawking at the historical schoolhouse (the "Bob in a museum" syndrome!), we had to hustle about to at least get a glimpse of the rest of Hawkshead before our one hour of paid parking ran out. |
Monika: Well when we finally ended our tour of the school the rain had stopped, however, the time on our parking ticket was about to run out. So we just did a quick tour of the little village, and took pictures of some of the interesting old buildings before the church clock striking 12 reminded us to get back to the car. |
Bob: Having to curtail our sightseeing just because of parking fees was irritating, so as I drove on to the next village of Coniston I decided to try to find some unregulated parking area. That is easier said than done in a tourist area, of course, as many areas are labeled as "no parking" zones, but when I find a string of local cars parked higgly-piggly along the side of the street, I assume the bans are not being enforced in that area and slide myself in if I can find a spot. I found just such a spot on the edge of Coniston on a side street leading up to some old copper mines, so after wedging the Punto in along a stone wall between two driveways, we started to meander about. First we followed the street up hill out of town to where it junctioned with the path to the copper mine and a bridle path for equestrians. We used the gate in a sheep pasture to follow the bridle path for a couple hundred yards, but as the trail turned downhill it became a temporary streambed that was carrying the runoff from the heavy morning rains. |
Monika: We decided to keep going to the next bigger town, Coniston at the north end of the next lake, Coniston Water. It was indeed a larger town and we decided to forego the car park and find parking on the street. One small street going off into mountains looked promising and we found a nice spot, where the car would be safe. Since it still was not raining, we decided to walk up the road towards the mountains. After about 1/4 of a mile the pavement stopped and the road turned into a footpath, actually an intersection of 3 footpaths, one going into the copper valley and one an official lane to Ambleside. We decided to take the path to Ambleside. It started on a lane along a meadow with sheep, so we made sure to close the gate. Since from the path the meadow went up into the mountains, little water cascades were coming down onto the path. When after a while, the path itself was all water, we decided it was time to turn around and head back into the village. |
Bob: Ah well, we were getting hungry anyway so we turned back, said good-bye to the sheep, and returned to town to search for a place to eat lunch. That took a while as along the way we found a grocery store and purchased supplies for our evening meals, and also searched around for an ATM machine to obtain more English currency. Finally we settled on Cafe Meadowdore, which seemed warm, clean, bright, and cheerful--just the ticket for a cold, rainy day! We both had the daily special, a meat and potato pie with mashed green peas and chips (American: French fries). Not only was the meal excellent, but by the time we finished the rain had let up so it was far more pleasant to walk about. Once again the gray stone architecture of many of the homes and shops in the village made it quite charming. Since my rain coat was working OK but I did not really have a good waterproof hat, I took some time out to shop for one. At a variety store I found a nice, light, "packable and crushable" waterproof that could be actually be folded small enough to fit into a pocket of my zip pants without too much difficulty. That hat came with me everywhere and became my new, best friend for the rest our time in England and Wales. |
Monika: I spotted a Co-op grocery store and we decided to do our shopping for Abendessen right then and there and quickly hauled it all back to the car. Our cash was quickly going down and we thought an influx of cash was in order. Our first try was an ATM at the local Post Office, but it was broken. So we headed to the gas station passing the cutest little public toilets I have ever seen. That ATM seemed to be working but did not like my Maestro card. Our last try was an ATM in the lobby of the local hotel, where we finally were successful. By now lunch seemed to be in order. A little cafe looked promising. You ordered at the counter and they brought your lunch. We both had the special, meat and potato pie with peas and chips (you never can have too many potatoes!). The atmosphere was rather artsy with pictures of local artists hanging all along the wall. The food was good and plentiful. We both left half of our chips. Thus fortified we walked some more through the town past some rather pretty looking row houses. But it started raining again and we both were still tired from lack of sleep yesterday, so we decided trying to get to the lake was a little too far. |
Bob: Returning to our B&B for the evening, we studied the maps we had just bought and traded off using the computer to update the trip journal until it was time for our evening snack. The liver pate, rolls, and cheese we had purchased turned out to blend quite well together, so combined with the hot cocao (Bob) and coffee (Monika) plus cookies provided by our hosts, it was a very satisfying meal. After dinner we read in the 5 or 6 books we had brought along before finally turning in for the night. |
Monika: We just wanted get home and rest. Bob handled the drive with aplomb, even when we again were confronted by another car and even an oncoming farm tractor on the one-lane part, but we were glad when we parked the car back at the farm and went up to our room. We had bought packets of maps describing walks around some of the villages in the area: Ambleside, Hawkshead, and Langsdale. I was delighted when I found out that one of the walks out of Ambleside almost passed by our B&B. It will be really nice tomorrow to get into Ambleside without Bob having to drive the car. |
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