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Ullswater 2024

July 2024
  • Colin Young
A 8-day adventure by Colin Read more
  • Colin Young

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  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    Ice Ceeam and Afternoon Naps

    July 23, 2024 in England ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    Sometimes I think back on the decision to write a blog about last year's Sea to Sea cycle and wonder if it was a wise decision. It has raised an expectation that I will document interesting adventures, which I have. Then you throw family holidays into the mix and the fear is that not to blog is to say holidays with you just aren't interesting. So in the potentially mistaken belief that my family actually read these random ramblings, I persist.

    No sooner had we emptied suitcases on our return from Croatia than we were packing them for a week in the Lake District with Grahame, Maria, Maia, Isla, Amelia and Freddie. We are spending the week in a newly converted barn just above Ullswater. The apartment is very posh (expensive) and includes a playroom for the wee ones.

    Today has been nice and sunny. It has been hot, but not hot hot, at about 18°C, a summer temperature I would consider to be near perfect for the outdoors - almost exactly half of what we enjoyed (endured) last week. Some suncream was required, but mainly only to prevent my nose getting red enough to merit an audition for the part of Rudolph in the Christmas panto.

    Holidaying with 2 under 5's is both fun and exhausting. They get up so early and they have more energy than the Duracell bunny. As compensation, they are cuter than cute and naturally funny. We did manage a walk with them along the lakeside, primarily to get an ice cream and a shot on the swings. Then home as Freddie, not quite 2 yet, needs an afternoon nap. I know how he feels.    Read more

  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    Captain Pugwash and the Rude Awakening

    July 24, 2024 in England ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    I'd expected to be wakened early by either Freddie or Amelia this morning, but it was not to be.  The site owners are building a wall (or an extension) to their house immediately at the end of our garden.  They are clearly keen to have it finished, as evidenced by the beep beep beep of reversing truck before 8 am. It seems their need for more bricks outweighs my need for more sleep. As I opened the curtains, I noted that it is the second day in a row that it has been warm and dry, with a hint of sunshine. If we were back home and tomorrow turns out to be similar, this would officially be designated as summer. 

    We drove down to the lakeside mid-morning.  Grahame has been consumed by the idea of hiring a boat since we got here. "Can we hire a boat dad, can we, can we dad". So we hired a boat.  There are 8 of us and the boat was for a maximum of 6 , with the hire charge increasing for every 2 sailors.  Some rudimentary maths confirmed that it was more economical to hire one boat for an hour than 2 boats for half an hour, so Captain Grahame and First Mate Maria set out with the 2 wee ones and the rest of us settled on the balcony of the coffee shop above the hire desk. I hadn't quite finished my coffee and tray bake when Grahame skilfully drove (or is it piloted) the boat back to the jetty. So being a loving, dutiful father, I sent him back out with Jackie and the 2 older girls for the remainder of the hire. That way I got to finish my coffee in peace.

    Returning from sea (or lake), the intrepid sailors were hungry so we ducked into the Ullswater Inn for lunch. It took a bit of working out as the place looked deserted other than a chef slaving over a hot stove. We finally figured out that there was a thriving bar upstairs where one placed the food order. There was quite an extensive menu and some interesting light bites.  I chose hot smoked salmon in a sourdough bun and Jackie, Grahame and Maria all went for venison on toasted sourdough with a pepper sauce, with fish and chips and burgers completing the order. As it turned out, the venison was already finished, but I didn't mind as it was probably a bit deer.

    Technically the afternoon should include some down time while Freddie had his nap, but today it just wasn't happening. He protested loudly and at length until he was allowed back downstairs to run about and make even more noise.  It's just as well he is so cute. Fortunately Maia and Isla took him and Amelia to the park for a while so we did get some time to ourselves.

    Jackie's phone is stuck in safe mode and has been playing up for the last couple of weeks. After a few hours of Googling and experimenting, I have deduced that it is something to do with the volume button. I phoned a local repair shop to ask if they could replace a faulty volume button. "It depends what's wrong with it", they said "I'd need to see it". So I tried again - if the volume button was faulty, how much would it cost to repair it? "It depends what's wrong with it, I'd need to see it". Tried again - if it did turn out to be a faulty volume button, would you have a replacement in stock? "No" he replied, (without even needing to see it). I feel that Safe Mode is an unfortunate term, as the phone has never been more in danger of being thrown against a wall or out of the window.    Read more

  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    Good News, Bad News

    July 25, 2024 in England ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    So the good news first, the builders decided to do their quiet jobs early this morning, so I got to drift into consciousness - the retiree's favourite way of wakening. When I pulled the curtains, the builders were onsite, but they were fussing around quietly with spirit levels and a saw.  Yesterday's concrete blocks that formed the new wall were lightweight (or the guy who had lifted them one handed was exceptionally strong), but still, smoothing them off with a saw is just plain weird. I still haven't made up my mind yet if it is a wall or an extension but they filled up to the top with rubble and there are now blue (water?) pipes sticking up in the air. I'm leaning towards a patio with a water feature. 

    Last autumn, when I cycled the Sea to Sea (C2C), we had a lunch break at Cafe4Eden in Penrith, a local charity dedicated to providing support (and employment) for those with learning difficulties. When I realised that this year's family holiday was only a short drive from Penrith, I put a revisit on my to-do list. So Jackie, Maia and I went this lunchtime. I just love the idea that these cafés provide a sense of inclusion, acceptance and value for those in our society that may otherwise be overlooked. It was also nice to see the same supervisors there and to have the sense that this was not a one-off but an ongoing commitment to the community. 

    A quick visit to Jack's Repairs in Penrith brought the bad news. I had already established that Jackie's phone was suffering from a dodgy volume button and that a replacement part was typically £5. What I didn't know was that for the S21 model, those crafty engineers at Samsung had sealed the part inside the screen module and that repair involved replacing the whole module and parting with £170. I suspect that would be throwing good money after bad, even though it is only a year since I bought the phone as a birthday present. I got a good deal online, but I have quickly learned that what seams like a bargain on the internet is often cheap for good reasons. I'd elaborate further, but I don't want to relive the pain of discovery.

    Tonight for our listening pleasure, the on-site bar has provided live musical entertainment in on the form of Graham, a middle aged gentleman with an acoustic guitar and a drum machine. One interesting factoid - he played the guitar left handed, a style enmployed by only 10% of the guitar playing community.  I assume that it was also a left handed guitar, but I wasn't near enough to see which order the strings were in. He was good as in 'I got a resident slot in a holiday camp' good, but not so good as in 'I'm currently touring as the support act for somebody famous' good. He leaned heavily on the Eagles (they do have some catchy acoustic numbers) and also did a reasonable job of covering Amy MacDonald, albeit at least one octave lower than the original. Being there with young children, there came a point in the evening when we had to leave him mid strum so we could put the kids to bed.  It wasn't a difficult decision.

    When we got back to our villa, Amelia treated us to her own rendition of Nicki Minaj's The Night is Still Young, singing enthusiastically into a soup ladle. However despite the sentiment expressed in the title, she was soon packed off to bed.    Read more

  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    The Boot and Shoe and Tarzan

    July 26, 2024 in England ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    It has been another warm and dry day and I am beginning to wonder where all the water comes from to keep the lakes full, although having checked my weather app, I think I may find out the answer to that tomorrow. But for today it was a chance to set out and explore a bit before the weather changed. The Boot and Shoe in Greystoke has been highly reccomended for it's food so we booked a table for lunch and set off early enough to go for a walk first. Greystoke is a village about 4 miles west of Penrith and at the 2011 census the parish had a population of 654. The village is centred on a green surrounded by stone houses and cottages and the aforementioned hostelry.

    I had passed through Greystoke last year when cycling the C2C and I had tried unsucessfully to convince Ronald that this was where Tarzan came from. So it was good to have the chance to explore the village and try to find some supporting evidence. There isn't a lot to be had though and it seems that the village has moved on from it's moment of Hollywood stardom. I settled for sending Ronald a picture of St Andrews Church and passing it off as Castle Greystoke, the ancestral home of Lord Graystoke, AKA Tarzan. However, when we returned to the Boot and Shoe for lunch, I struck gold. The wee ones were acting up waiting for their food so I took them to the children's play area behind the beer garden. And there it was, in 6 foot high technicolour, the final proof I had been searching for. "Est 1912 TARZAN LAND GREYSTOKE". No matter that it was on one of those boards that you stick your head through to take an amusing photo, it was written down and so arguably as reliable as Wikipedia. Of course I just had to take the photo. So thank you to the Boot and Shoe, not only for the delicious lunch but also for staging such irrefutable evidence of the link between the village and Tarzan.

    Freddie needed his afternoon nap when we got back so Jackie and I decided to go for a walk to Pooley Bridge. I plotted a route on my route plotting app which turned out to be part of the Ullswater Way. It also turned out to be mostly up hill and down dale, rather than flat along the lakeside, but fortunately it was only 3 miles so not too strenuous, despite the many undulations. The views of the lake and surrounding hills from our elevated vantage point were spectacular and more than compensated for the effort involved. Poorly Bridge was still very busy but we did manage to find a coffee shop with an empty table. Even better, we didn't have to walk back as Grahame came and met us in the car.    Read more

  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    Rain Rain Go Away

    July 27, 2024 in England ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    There are more words for rain in Scotland than there are days in a Scottish summer. This morning I'd describe it as stoatin', which for those with a more refined vocabulary is descriptive of the act of hitting a horizontal surface and bouncing back up in the air. It looks like we will have to venture out in it at some point but hopefully by then it will just be smirrin'.

    The wettest town or city in Scotland last year was Edinburgh, which apparently saw almost 1.5 metres of rainfall, but that's nothing when compared to the western Highlands which can see up to 4.5 metres annually. If you live around there you must get fair drookit on a regular basis. Scotland does get a bit of a bad reputation for rainfall, especially on the BBC National weather forecast, when even if rain is restricted to a light shower in the Outer Hebrides, the forecaster will conclude with the words "and rain in Scotland". So in the interests of fairness, I'd like to report that Mawsynram in India is the wettest place on Earth receiving nearly 12 metres of rainfall every year.

    I felt the need to refresh my knowledge of the science of rainfall measuring. I seem to remember at school it involved collecting together a bucket, a funnel of known diameter and a measuring cylinder. Then all you had to do was sit and wait for it to rain. So 1 mm of rainfall means there is 1 litre of water falling for every square metre of ground. Edinburgh covers approximately 260 km², so that last year it's many rooftops had to contend with 400 billion litres, or about 150,000 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's a good job the city is built on 7 hills.

    It had stopped raining by midday, but it looked like there was more to come, so we headed to for Rheged, an all weather, all year round visitor centre, situated within Britain’s largest grass covered building. Rheged is named after one of the kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"), the Brittonic-speaking region of what is now Northern England and southern Scotland, during the post-Roman era and Early Middle Ages. There we found a soft play for the wee ones and a make your own decoupage animals for the older girls and their Nannie.

    Got to watch the 7s rugby final before heading out to the children's disco. I love children's discos. The are all of a similar format, loud cheesy music, flashing lights, an empty dance floor, children wandering around aimlessly with balloons or a Glo-stick and a load of adults taking advantage of the distraction to get in a few rounds.    Read more

  • Colin YoungTravelerUllswater 2024

    A Walk, a Memory Lapse and a Drone

    July 28, 2024 in England ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    Let's state the obvious right away, I forgot to document the final day of our holiday in the Lake District. My intention was to write it as soon as we got home but life got in the way and it never actually happened. I have been taken to task about it by a couple of friends so......

    Our final day in the Lake District was arguably the best for weather. Taking advantage of the sunshine we headed for Brothers Water to walk round the lake. I know that it is a walk we have been on before, when Maia and Isla were younger. I have a memory (and a photo) of me standing on a rock in full Freddie Mercury pose from the cover of Queen's Made in Heaven Album. But as we approached the water through the tree-lined path, I realised that is all I had, a vague, half-memory, only retained due to an image on Google Photos. Everything else about the walk was new to me. In a small way, I had a glimpse of one possible future and the words of a song written by Amy MacDonald for her aunt came to mind "And my memory doesn't get me very far, I can't remember my name, Or exactly who you are....".

    Anyway, back to the present (or the recent past). We came to a camping site about 3 miles in, which to our delight had a shop that sold much needed drinks and ice cream for the wee ones. Freddie and Amelia love their ice cream and have almost mastered the art of eating one. Amelia, being older and almost a schoolgirl does better and leaves no evidence (until you want to take her sticky hand) but Freddie goes full ice cream beard as can be seen from his photo. The final mile back to the car was along a narrow, stoney and in places overgrown path which we endured as a safer alternative to walking down the busy road. Amelia loved it and christened it the Tricky Track although those walking (very slowly) behind her on the narrow, no overtaking path were less gleeful.

    Grahame is a licenced drone pilot - really it's a thing - and so we were able to capture spectacular views of the water and the nearby Kirkstone Pass, that would otherwise have been impossible. There are a lot of rules for drone pilots, which Grahame patiently summarised and I quickly forgot. Something to do with private and public land, maximum flying height, minimum distance from buildings, etc, but despite all that it seems to be great fun. Apologies if I am starting to drone on.......

    Sadly the evening is lost to my aforementioned failing memory, but undoubtedly it was full of precious family moments. And I'm sure at some point there was also the obligatory rendition of Frank Sinatra's now infamous song about some city in America that was so good they named it twice.    Read more

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