Like British Columbia, England’s Lake District begs to be painted in watercolours.
The problem with that is I don’t think enough shades of green exist to do the countryside justice. There must be thousands of shades in the landscape. And each shade of green is changed yet again by the flora the colours reflect: trees are soft and drape-y, frilly, pine-needle sharp, mossy, even some of the pine trees look soft.
The green is interspersed with white and black cotton puffs of sheep as well as the various coloured cattle.
Houses are mostly stone, so in the sunlight they glisten, in the rain they shine, but in the grey before rain, they glower at you forebodingly.
Everywhere you look flowers bloom in profusion. Foxglove in bright pinks and purples and blues grow like weeds here, and houses are festooned with garlands and potted plants. Gardens are glorious. Of course everything is lush, green and colourful for a reason…it rains a lot, but who needs the sun to have a good time in the Lake District.
Our hotel in Newby Bridge sits on the River Leven, which feeds into or possibly out of Windermere Lake. The river is home to several families of ducks and is spanned by a very old five-span stone bridge. In front of the hotel was a tree so lovely, and so beautifully scented I had to ask the staff at reception what it was called. After three repeats of the answer, I am still not certain of the kind of tree it is, except that they call it the butterfly bush because it attracts butterflies. It look much like our lilac trees, but the flower is a darker purple and is a cone-shaped.
Looking around me, I can see why so many painters live here (past and present) or visit to paint. Every town we go through has people perched on rocks, or walls or portable chairs sketching or painting. The would-be artist in me envies their skill and patience. Not to ignore those who paint with words — poets like Wordsworth lived here too
You can’t walk a step without coming upon something historical. Yesterday we visited the Cartmel Priory, a beautiful 12th century building with connections to the Magna Carta. I’m still stuggling with this bit of history — according to my understanding of it, the builder William Marshall was “closely involved” in the negotiations which led to the meeting between King John and the barons in Runnymede, and apparently, likely (notice all the qualifiers here) was one of those signing the Magna Carta. He eventually was appointed Regent of England when King John died.
The Priory is beautiful and is stil an active church. The tag line on all its literature is “Ancient jewel — living church”. When we were there parishioners were in the process of preparing for the annual five-day floral celebration in honour of the Magna Carta.
As always I am in awe of the builders who constructed these soaring ceilings with not even a slide rule much less a computer rendering or any of the equipment. The delicate carving on the chairs in the choir was beautiful. And I blotted my copy. When purchasing the usual guide books, I said to the lady looking after me “I am filled with awe…” Her face lit up in anticipation of a religious epiphany …”at what it must have taken to build this magnificent building hundreds of years go.” She was very pleasant but very let down.
One (of many) interesting facts gleaned from the guide book is this one: “1322 Priory property is damaged by a rampaging Robert the Bruce.” Scottish raiders had visited once before in 1316, but their second visit was destructive . They left the Priory standing, but they caused so much damaged that the property value was reduced to “less than a fifth of what it had been.” Hadrian’s wall (a 73-mile-long wall approximately 2000 years old, built by the Romans to keep the Picts out) apparently wasn’t much help protecting England from the ravening Scots.
We passed a shop in Cartmel which claimed to be the originator of sticky toffee pudding. In recognition and celebration of this I had it as my pudding two nights of the three we spent in the Lake District
In another kind of exploration of history, I toured the Beatrix Potter “attraction” in Windermere. She died more than 70 years ago, so i suppose it was historical. It used three-dimensional displays to illustrate her 29 (i think) books. Mrs. Tiggiewinkle (I can’t agree with myself on the spelling of her name) has always been my favourite character, although I don’t know why as she is alway doing housework and ironing, and those are centainly not my favourite activities.
To my delight we found a crystal factory down the road from Windermere in Ulverston. We haven’t been in one in a decade since the Edinburgh Crystal Factory closed back whenever that was (2005-ish). The Cumbria Crystal Factory makes delicious crystal and we looked and drooled, and just because we don’t have enough crystal (well, really who can have too much?) we bought two pieces. The staff took delight in telling us that their crystal is used in all the period TV programs, such as Poldark and Downton Abbey, and that Daniel Craig (the latest James Bond for the non-fans) posted a photo f himself on facebook drinking whisky from one of their glasses. And in a delightful historical side note, Ulverston is apparently the birthplace of Stan Laurel, for those of you with parents old enough to remember Laurel and Hardy.
The factory had experienced a “blow up” a couple of days before, so the actual melting pots and blowing, cutting and engraving activities were not happening. We had seen them before so this wasn’t a major disappointment, although I do like watching these skillful demonstrations.
Staff also told us that theirs was now the only crystal factory in the UK still making crystal from scratch. I briefly thought of Waterford in Ireland, but quickly discarded the thought, as it is in the Republic of Ireland, so not in the UK. At any rate the crystal was exquisite, and I must have fondled most of the pieces on display before we left.
Of course we had to leave the Lake District to head to our destination for a couple of weeks — Wales. The insanity of the motorway was in harsh juxtaposition to the lake district’s bucoliic natural glory (yes, even with summer traffic). As we drove by Manchester we gave thanks that we were travelling south, because it is a Saturday and the world is leaving Manchester. At one point, we passed about 15 miles (not kilometres) of traffic of opposing traffic almost dead stopped — a typical British tailback — of people leaving Manchester for the weekend.
If a car is 10 feet long, there are 520 cars per mile times three lanes times 10 miles, 15,600 cars give or take!!! Wow, and the traffic, although no longer stopped is steady approaching us. I think we will find another way back north when the time comes.
Less than half an hour after smirking at the tail back on the other side of the motor way we were in our own, speeding through 15 or 20 miles of our own route in close to an hour or so. Certainly changed our ETA in Betws-y-coed.
