When we arrived back from one of our many walks in the Lakes District we had a guard Morgans looking after the van.  As you can see it was such a lovely day that they were out driving around together.  From memory it was a Sunday.

We parked up here right next to Coniston Water two nights in a row.  However, we did drive around and have a lovely walk around the town of Coniston which turned out to be my favourite.

on Monday 24th we went to the Drunken Duck for our 35th wedding anniversary.  Great meal, lovely staff and particularly unstuffy for a famous restaurant.  We parked the night in their car park and the next day went for a walk to Hawkeshead which is Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter country.  Very sweet little town with narrow winding tiny roads.  The weather was fairly inclement so we holed up in a pub for coffee and morning tea muffins until the rain cleared.  Then we trekked back to the van and headed up to Derwentwater and the town of Keswick.

The top photo is the view from our next camping spot.  We ended up having two nights with this fabulous view.  It is overlooking Derwentwater.

We pulled in late and had a quiet and early night.  John went for a bit of a walk while I cleaned up and came running back in with sleet all over his back!  I had made the right decision to clean up!

The next day we went for a fabulous walk up to Catbells.  A very famous walk in the Lakes District.  Three and a half hours and I was shattered as it was a long way uphill … as you can see … and downhill via a fairly steep path imbedded with stone … a worst case scenario for my knees!

The next day we walked along the lake in Keswick which you can see in the distance of the bottom photo.  About 7 kms.  However on route we found this fabulous cafe with a walled garden next to a famous old stately home where Beatrix Potter went for 10 holidays and where she did a lot of her paintings.  Peter Rabbit was written and illustrated here as Beatrix used to take her rabbits with her on holidays.

The cafe even had a basket full of fresh towels so that people could dry their dogs before they took them into the cafe.  The Brits are seriously into their dogs.

We continued on to Keswick which was a reasonably big town with an interesting market happening in the main street when we were there.

We caught the ferry back to near the van.  All in all a very pleasant day.

The photo directly above was breakfast in the van the morning after the big walk.  As you can see we don’t really slum it.

The scenery has been spectacular with wild bluebells and daffodils everywhere.  We keep saying to ourselves why haven’t we been here before?  We love it!  The best walking ever!