We decided to take the scenic route to our chosen campsite, near Keswick, and stopped off at lake Windemere.
The weather was all over the place! Glorious sunshine one minute, heavy showers the next. Rainbows aplenty.
As we headed into Keswick, the day got darker and we ended up putting the (already wet) tent up in heavy rain. Not fun!
As we were feeling a bit wet and miserable, we set out on foot hoping to find a nice country pub with an open fire to warm up by. We were in luck, 10mins down the road we came across just that.
The next day there was more rain and showers. Nick is really only a fair weather walker so we went for drive round Derwent Water instead.
The weather may have been gloomy, but this has surely got to be one of the best times of the year to come out and see these national parks. The autumn colours are amazing!
We visited a stone circle that overlooked the town of Keswick and prayed to the pagan gods for a bit of sunshine.
While driving around the lake, we hit a rather big pothole (hidden by a puddle). A little while later and we realised the exhaust was making a funny noise. We stopped to have a look - yep, the exhaust had knocked itself out of its mounting. We found the number of a local garage in Keswick (called HiQ) and they not only fitted us in that afternoon but didn't even charge us anything to get the exhaust remounted!
While we waited for the garage to finish on the car we wondered down to the lake and we saw some blue sky! Not a lot but it was very welcome.
The day after we woke up to sun! We quickly scrambled out of the tent and got our walking gear on before heading up Catbells (a smallish mountain - a favourite of our friends Boris and Dan!)
The views were amazing over the lakes to the snowy mountains. This was what we had missed out on in Snowdonia.
In the afternoon we decided to drive down Honister Pass, a scenic route down a valley. As we did so, we realised we were tantalisingly close to the snowy peaks so we parked up, got out and started scrambling up what was supposed to be a footpath but appeared to be a waterfall.
We finally reached the snow line! So happy we got to see some English snow before we go to Australia.
I was a bit worried as the path we had climbed up was pretty slippery and getting down might be tricky. Nick decided the best thing would be to traverse the mountain 'off piste' and head for a path we could see in the distance.
Once we were back on the path it was easy coming down.
Apologies for the hundreds of photos but this place is just beautiful and I hope it comes across even slightly.
Next blog post will be our first adventures in Scotland!
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