Friday 3/5/19

Maryann writing. Another night at the Ennerdale Country House and Hotel having cancelled YHA Black Sails due to my head cold. Feel quite unwell but hoping it’s just a bad cold and now dosing up with Cold & Flu, Honey & Lemon Tea plus lots of rest. Rob has been wonderful and so supportive despite the abrupt change to our plans and I feel very grateful to have him by my side on this journey. His kindness and loving attention has stopped me from feeling too low about missing our the full walk and we hope we can still do parts of the walk.

As Rob pointed out we have 31 weeks out of 32 to walk and driving the lakes we can see so much more.

Today was amazing! The lakes district is so beautiful. As much as possible we have followed the two days of walking we have missed, from Cleator to Ellendale Bridge and then to Borrowdale in the middle of the Lake District.

Ennerdale Bridge.

A view over Ennerdale Water.

Driving up and away from Ennerdale water, looking back down the valley. The air is clear and it is so quiet.

One of the many beautiful country roads we drove on.

The roads are all very narrow, in some places just one lane wide, so a lot of care is needed when driving and you have to constantly lookout for other cars.

Loweswater, another lake between Ennerdale and Buttermere.

Buttermere, a tiny village in the hills. We stopped for a cup of tea at Skye Farm tearoom and three of the working dogs came out to say hello. One little guy, a terrier I think, was so old he could barely walk more than a few steps at a time. A cold day he hobbled into the sunshine then sat and refused to move, even when a car came in and had to turn around as there was no parking.

Buttermere Tarn and Honister pass. So beautiful and we wouldn’t have seen half of this if we had walked so am feeling a bit better about the change of plan today. Still full of cold too…

YHA Borrowdale, our accommodation for the evening. After check in we walked down to the local pub, the Scarfell.

Public footpaths over here follow meandering paths through fields, laneways and roads and across properties, this one was typical through the little village of Seatoller.

The pub had a charming fire and like most other public places was dog friendly 😄.

Rob and I had a lovely meal including a serve of “dripping chips” Yum!

Then a chilly walk back to the YHA, hot chocolate and some chat with other walkers on the C2C, then bed.

Thursday 2/5/19

Rob writing. Maryann woke Thursday still feeling unwell so I decided to change our plans to allow her to rest and recover. We were both disappointed but with more bad weather coming we thought of hiring a car so we could continue to accommodation we had previously booked as possibly the best course of action.

We investigated other options “packhorse” who will carry your bags but Maryann was not up to walking far and will need a few days to recover. So missed out on our night at the blacksail yha and it was 4 bus changes and 6 hours to our next booked accommodation at Borrowdale.

So car hire we did but nothing available til Friday so that mean’t another day in Cleator.

To make the most of the time here we caught a bus into Whitehaven just before lunch.

Ennerdale Country House & Hotel

Lolly shop Whitehaven

Lonsdale Castle whitehaven

We walked the streets of Whitehaven and harbour and bought a few supplies from the local stores – Aldi; a lot more choices than ours including alcohol and Home Supplies for a corkscrew for a bottle of French Wine (from Aldi) I found that needed a corkscrew! Lots of Australian wine on offer including Hardy’s, Banrock (Kay!) and Penfolds. After shopping we sat in the town square and had some lunch, Maryann feed most of her roll to a big fat Seagull!

We then walked a bit more visiting the Yellow Earl Bar, named after the Earl of Lowther. Quite a chap apparently, who inherited the family mining fortune which he then squandered on gambling, drink, women and bad business decisions. He always wore yellow and was quite a character despite leaving his family in debt they have never recovered from. The owner of the Yellow Earl, Mr McLean, enjoyed recounting the Earls many business ventures including founding the AA because his Rolls Royce kept breaking down and of course his many misdemeanor’s also!

Across the road was Michael Moon’s bookstore.

Maryann stopped to chat to Mr Moon about the curious store sign and 40 mins later and many stories about his books, we realised we had missed our bus and had to wait another hour for the next one so another lap of the harbour and then back to the Yellow Earl to wait as the day began to cool off.

Back to Cleator and to the local pub – The Brooke, for dinner and then back to the hotel for a long soak in the tub for both of us.

Looking on the bright side, a good day considering we had to change our plans, enjoyable and an opportunity to see Whitehaven and have experiences we wouldn’t otherwise have had.