Day 17: I wandered lonely as a cloud....

...and suddenly I was in the Lake District. (Geoff is too!)  More specifically, we're at One, Fern Cottages, Back Lane, Lindale, Cumbria on the north-west coast of England. - another of Geoff's fabulous finds on the Interwebz.  It's as comfy and cosy as Bramblefield Cottage but about 300 years older.  Cumbrians, back when this was a display home in the 1700s, must have been short (and possibly stout) like me not hulking, muscular Viking types like Geoff, who has banged his head on various doorframes at least a dozen times since we arrived early this afternoon.  I am now in the habit of saying "duck!" every time he moves between rooms.

Our journey here from East Yorkshire took about three hours - huge congestion on the motorway as we approached Manchester and while that was manageable, we were less than whelmed that our bloody buggery sat nav lost its gps signal for 30 minutes as we approached a number of crucial exits on that lengthy 'spaghetti junction' part of the motorway. We're wise to it now, and Geoff, who always did his homework at school, last night tracked the route on Google and memorised it. Thank Dog he did, because when we would otherwise have been flinging our arms in the air and saying "Oh shite!" (actually it would have been worse) he breezily took us off and on the motorway at all the right exits and entry points.  No wonder he was in primary school Opportunity Classes (NSW education system only).


Anyway, we're here and dinner is cooking (veg biryani) in our spacious, well-appointed kitchen.

There are lots of little steps between rooms that I have to keep an eye on with my gammy leg. There is also a daunting staircase with very steep, narrow steps but it has a handrail and I walk up and down it slowly, like the pensioner I am.







  
                                                                              Fortunately there's a downstairs dunny as well as well an upstairs, which will be handy. I hope only to climb up those stairs when off to bed.

This pic shows our bathroom - fittings very modern but, you know, friggin' shower over the bathtub again.... At least it has levers that resemble taps and we won't have to stoke a boiler, press buttons and stand on one leg, semaphoring, in order to get a thimble full of hot water from the shower head. 







This is the ceiling part of our boudoir,  just to show the old beams.  Geoff has had several practice runs and thinks he can safely negotiate this beam without biffing himself on it.                   

      

Another boudoir shot. Am not sure about all the cushions and pillows. Who sits at right-angles, staring at the wall,  when they're in bed?  Lots of extraneous cushions and pillows on the bed at Bramblefield Cottage too.  Not complaining, mind. It's quite charming. But we do fling them all on the floor.      





Will hand over to Geoff now, with just a quick mention of Derwent Pencils.  We're in the vicinity. And we will be going to the 'pencil museum'. (Pffft! As if Derwents were just pencils!) More on this in a later post. Also daffodils, Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.  Woo hoo! 

Geoff now at the helm. I'd just like to make the point that I haven't biffed my head on any of the doorways for at least 15 minutes.  I'm now feeling like I was born here.   

                  

 

 

Here's an outside view, where you can see the lady of the house at the front door  if you look carefully.  Perhaps not quite what it looked like in the 17th century, but hopefully you get the general idea.  The road outside, the aptly named Back Lane is about 3 feet wide, and is two way of course.  We've very quickly worked out that if we want to have any chance at all of parking the car in the designated spot, which has been carved out of a rock wall on the other side of the road, we can only approach it from one direction.

 

Our self guided village walking tour took us to some delightful spots frequented by the local wildlife.

 

 

 



 

The border collies (they're the black and white ones, not the white ones with the black faces) were very happy when we retrieved their frisbee for them, but refused our entreaties to make friends, being totally loyal to their father, as befits all good working dogs. 

 

On the way home we detoured via the Lindale Inn, our new local as of today.  A pint of Black Sheep and a pear cider of Scandinavian heritage, the on-tap English variety being unaccountably unavailable.  Our new local is a bit strange.  We seated ourselves on what we think was a chesterfield and listened to Miley Cyrus* (*2015 version of Lulu but about a tenth as talented).  We may give it another try - we're here for a week after all.

 

First impressions - excellent!  Even the weather is an improvement, although there is of course plenty of opportunity for it to turn before tomorrow morning, as is indeed threatened.  Oh, and did we say it was election day?  The polls don't close until 10 (another couple of hours away), so unless we choose to make it an all nighter (which looks highly unlikely at present), you antipodeans will know the result before we do when we arise tomorrow morn.

 

Anne here again: the complete indifference here to the election is really quite surprising.  I am certain Australians are far better informed about the various UK parties and their policies than the Brits are.  I expect we will be getting our info from David Marr and Ant Green via The Guardian and the ABC websites, given the BBC is preoccupied with 24-hour snooker tournaments. 

 

Night night from Coombria!  xxxx