Our vacation spanned the sunny, sweltering heat near Brighton Beach in the south to the chilly rains near Scotland at Hadrian's Wall.  This was a vacation that we planned with our Ordnance map of England (a great resource) and our guidebooks to hikes in the Lakes region.  You may want to plan ahead for this one since you may have to adapt to a variety of weather conditions.  You will make a lot discoveries when you visit England and we'd like you to write and tell us about them.

LAKES REGION, MAY, 1997 - Greetings, we're back! I thought I would record some of the events that befell while they are still fresh in my mind. You may get some hints as to what to do and not to do while on your trip to the lakes region.

May 2nd - After a stately glide into Gatwick on AA173 (redeemed my air miles on my AAdvantage VISA card) we drove up the M1, A1 and A64. I had taken a melatonin tablet the preceding two days and didn't have a problem with jet lag. I remember seeing a passing UPS truck with its locking bars obscuring just the right letters to read "United Farce Service." We drove up to York and spent the sunniest part of this day exploring Yorkminster; trying to drive out during rush hour we had a near miss. Our car was a VW Polo, 5-speed with the gear shift lever in the middle where it always is, but since the driver's seat is on the right, you shift with your left hand. With their penchant for driving on the left hand side of the road, the driving takes quite while to master. Whew! Glad we got out of there unscathed.

York, North Yorkshire, England

May 2nd, 1997

Alderside - Contact John Tanner-Smith for reservations

Finally got to Easingwold (A19) where we located a B&B called Alderside run by John and Daphne Tanner Smith, which Mary Mudd had recommended. The gate was closed but Linda had the courage to go up to the house and knock. Of course, they had a room. Lovely old town complete with a church with a Norman tower. I was even able to specify that I wanted the bacon (more like Canadian ham), no sausage or mushrooms. Everywhere else, we got the sausage and the mushrooms sometimes not even sautéed, the mandatory complete English breakfast. I compared notes with John, who was an avid vegetable gardener. He gave up on strawberries but grows raspberries and salad greens. They were amazed that we were able to drive from Gatwick in that short a time. Someone did mention that they fly into Manchester but the flight from RDU to Gatwick is direct.

May 3rd - We planned our next leg along B6277 all the way up the Pennines to A69 near Haltwhistle. At Richmond we came across the "Coast-to-Coast Walk" which was one of the base points for a hike that we had planned in the Yorkshire Dales. The local playing field was doubling as a campgrounds for the bank holiday which was Monday. We crossed the river Swale and climbed the narrow alleyways of Richmond to the Norman castle built by Alan the Red in 1071. Some burly blokes came up to the admission desk as we were paying and declared that they were the Vikings. The clerk looked as clueless as we were. Later, we figured out that they were a part of the re-enactment setting up inside the castle walls as we looked out from the castle keep (12th century).

Yorkshire Dales, Bank Holiday

May 3rd

The Yorkshire Dales

I was a passenger for the last section and thought that I would be picking slate chips out of my teeth. We found a national park where you "pay and display." We walked along Hadrian's wall up to a massive crag which was being scaled by some climbers as we arrived. The crag, it turns out, was fortified on the other side and was a part of the wall. I couldn't imagine legions from sunny Italy building and then manning these walls but there it was, cold and windswept, now part of some shepherd's fields. Linda's need to visit Hadrian's wall had taken us much farther north than I had originally planned but we had the foresight to reserve the next B&B at Talkin. You probably will have a hard time locating this town even on the very thorough Ordnance Survey map of Northern England which we found at The World Travelers Books & Maps store in Chapel Hill. This was a sheepman's farmhouse with barns and wife tending to the lambs. The well kept garden was auntie's job.

Mayburgh Henge, Brougham Castle

May 4th

Penrith

You must read Walker's Britain from Pan Books/Ordnance Survey.

May 4th - Today, we drove down the west side of the Pennines (B6413) to Penrith thence to the A597 along the Ullswater. This last segment was the most breathtaking part of the trip to me. Lonely, snow-capped crags surrounded us on all sides, as close to an alpine foothills as you can see. By now the weather reports were not good...-2 and 0 degrees overnight...that's Centigrade. London was expected to have snow that day, last time it did that in May was 30 years ago. I hoped that we could return there since my videocam ran out of juice since I hadn't figured out how to use the charger the night before. We dropped in on the pub at intersection of A592 and 1400 and found dozens lined up at the bar. Shortcutting onto the 1400 we drove alongside a roiling mountain stream. This is a terrifying road lined as all English roads are with evil piles of rocks. I was reporting the distance from the mirror to the wall as "...2 foot...1 foot..." to Linda as we caromed down this grade. We reserved, sight unseen, at the Riverside Lodge Country House near the Rothay bridge in Ambleside since the tab ranged from 23 to 30 £/person/night (classed as inexpensive by Frommer's 97 England). It was a short walk to the center of town. A wonderful town, centrally located for our hiking plans and we spent two nights there.

Mapmakers, poets and artists had each captured the British landscape and forged it, through their different disciplines, into a single coherent vision – the vision of a nation. From the summit of Black Combe, Wordsworth looked out over the terrain Mudge had surveyed, declaring it a "display august of man’s inheritance, of Britain’s calm felicity and power!"

Black and White Combes

May 5th

William Wordsworth and the Ordnance Survey of Britain

May 5th - Our first hike took us up and down the narrow roads (A593 and A695) near the western coast of the Irish Sea and even a detour to the town of Millom where we bought a pair of gloves for Linda since it was very cold that morning. Not giving up, we finally found the layby across from a lane marked with a totally black sign (paint had worn off) indicating our foot path. It was raining heavily when we arrived. The walk down the lane led to a stile and a bridge so we knew this was the place described in our Pan Books "Walker's Britain". We entered the valley of the White Combe (hollow) with sheep galloping away at every turn in the path. The rock there is called Skiddaw slate and seems to be the choice construction material for everything in the area, walls of houses, shingles, garden walls. Climbing up continuously (rated energetic) for 2 miles we came upon a number of rushing waterfalls until we got to the Black Combe. From a plateau up there we could see the Isle of Man through the mist. They said that on a clear day you can see Ireland and Wales.

 On the drive back, I was reporting "...3 inches, 2 inches..." when BAPP we lost the mirror. On the Polo, the mirror just flaps back and the mirror dangles from a few wires but you can just pop it back in. We also lost a tire on that day; Skiddaw slate is very sharp. This hike, Linda thought, was the best of our trip.

Ambleside	May 6th		Wordsworth's Dove Cottage		Southeast Lakeland
Bucolic Landscape	May 6th		Derwent Water and Lodore Cascade		Visit Countrywalker.com for more on Derwent Water

May 6th - The Tourist Information office in the center of Keswick (pronounced Kezick by the locals) booked accommodations for us at Goodwin house. We set out for Derwent Water and our hike was opposite to the description in the Walker's Britain. They described it as anti-clockwise. We, eschewing any left-handedness, did it clockwise. We boarded the launch and sailed to Lodore cascade hiking around a swampy area which was filled with 6 inches of water from the rains of the day before. Meeting friendly hikers along the way, we finally encountered a staff-wielding hiker who waved his stick menacingly but we gave way and so did the old codger. We reached a pier at 3-1/2 miles and waved down the launch which was just approaching. Beautiful day but we were already looking for more substantial rain gear. Linda was wearing the rain pants that I wore for years biking back and forth to work in Dover, DE. Needless to say, the bottom was blown out. My ugly rain jacket would not cover my favorite vest which had a right side pocket big enough to house my digicam. The vest was constantly soaked. We both ended up with fine rain shells by Scanda.

Kirkstone Pass

May 7th

The Cumbria Directory

Don't miss this breathtaking wilderness experience!

May 7th found us in Windermere in another B&B called Haisthorpe run by Mick and Angela Brown. The rooms, we tried 2 of them, were probably the best of our trip. The warm radiator on all of the time (an essential for drying your clothes), with spotless baths, newly renovated. The walls were decorated with an occasional memento of Mick's flying stint in the cold war RAF. His e-mail address is Haisthorpe@clara.net in case you want to make reservations. Here we found the best food of our trip in a little restaurant called Roger's where there was not an empty table. A favorite place for birthday parties; one was going on that night. The next day we took the launch the wrong way again around Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England followed by a hike up to Orest head, with a great view of the lake. The swans and ducks didn't seem to notice the frequent over flights of the Harrier jets.

Windermere, Cumbria	May 8th		Haisthorpe Guest House, Holley Rd.	Mick & Angela Brown	Their web page Make Reservations!
Bowness on Windermere	May 8th

Enough of the interminable details...briefly we were able to see the mountain with the best view, the largest lake, William Wordsworth's Dove cottage and some of England's best-kept homes and gardens.