I slept in today while Kaye went off to tour some place or another and left me to do the dishes from last night's dinner.

At about midday, I packed a bag with some lunch and my coat and walked down to the Bowness promenade. First stop was the clothing shop on the pier to buy myself a hat as I'd left my cap in the car earlier in the week (which was now with Kaye, somewhere other than here, where I needed it).

Choices, choices, I settled on a nice county cap and blended in with the crowd :)



I hired a little wooden boat and chugged my way out of Bowness Bay and onto Lake Windermere. I headed towards Ambleside and stuck to the western side of the lake, taking a few scenic photos along the way.



I reached the top of the lake after about an hour of touring so I decided to tie up at the Waterhead pier and eat my lunch with a cuppa at the small cafe. You can just make out my boat behind some other much nicer craft at the pier.



After lunch I pushed off back down the lake again, this time hugging the Eastern side - where most of the towns and/or villages are located. Saw quite a number of sail boats on the lake, along with a lovely castle nestled in amongst the trees at one point along the shore. Even the boat house was built like a miniature castle!



I docked back at Bowness again for a quick convenience stop and then headed further south down the lake towards another small island which the boatmaster had said was also used during the filming of the Swallows and Amazons movie.



Just after photographing this island, I heard the drone of a rather large airplane which turned out to be a Lockheed Martin C130 Hercules from an RAF base near Windermere.



On my way back to Bowness Bay, I motored around to the western side of Belle Isle to check out some of the wildlife - some amazing sounds and sights with plenty of different water fowl going about their business (2Mb movie), oblivious to the humans around them.



Suddenly, the hoots and whistles of the native birdlife around the lake was drowned out by the roar of an RAF fighter doing a low pass fly over of the lake (3Mb) - amazingly I had the camera ready and in video mode, so managed to capture the fly by! I suspect the plane was one of these, but I can't be sure.

Update: Mick sent me an email to say "the fly by aircraft is in fact an F-15, not as far as I know, used by the RAF."

Back to Bowness Bay and the pier where Kaye picked me up on the promenade. We went back to the cottage and had an early dinner and some well deserved rest.

A bright and sunny day, so I decided to have an encounter with William Wordsworth and the area north of Windermere while Leigh amused himself on the water. Once again the pics for this adventure are on the real camera and wont be developed until we get home.

Just past Ambleside is Rydal Mount, the farmhouse home of William Wordsworth from 1812 to 1850 when he died. At the bottom of the road is St Mary’s church and off to the side is Dora’s Field that Wordsworth purchased to build a house for his daughter Dora. For whatever reason this never happened.

Further on is Grasmere, where the white Dove Cottage (Wordsworth’s home from 1799-1808) is nestled in amongst all the slate cottages. Wordsworth, his wife Mary and sister Dorothy are all buried in the local St Oswald’s Church yard but I didn’t manage to find it on my one sweep through Grasmere.

Further on to the larger town of Keswick which has some interesting non-Wordsworth sights.

The Cars of the Stars Museum bought back a lot of memories. Inside were many cars that I remember. There are 4 Flintstone vehicles, 2 Batmobiles, Emma Peel of the Avengers sporty Lotus, the Back to the Future DeLorean, various James Bond vehicles, Mr Bean’s mini complete with padlock on the driver-side door, FAB 1 the lifesize car used to promote the Thunderbirds movie, KITT (bought from David Hasselhoff), Herbie the love bug much in need of repair, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Munsters car, the A-team van, Mad Max I and II Ford Cobra, the Dukes of Hazzard orange General Lee car, and Laurel and Hardy in their 1923 Model T Ford used in some of their movies. All had appropriately painted backdrops and were surrounded by models of the people or other aspects that are associated with them. It is all very well done.

The Teapottery was interesting but the gift shop is something else altogether. I have never seen so many amazing teapots. I can see why people collect them coz most were really groovy. Pianos, teddy bears, cupboards, kitchen benches, jars of marmite (yuk), and just about anything you can name, made into a tea pot. You’ll just have to wait for the pics to see what I mean. No I didn’t start collecting – I don’t think Di would forgive me if I came home with yet another dust collector :)

From there I went to the Derwent Pencil Museum. I bought Robert’s birthday present so no surprise what that might be – he’ll just have to wait until I get home! Very interesting with a display of how graphite is mined and how pencil leads and finally a pencil was made. Of course, now-a-days things are much more mechanised and computerised in the factory process. They have on display the world’s largest pencil complete with its Guinness Book of Records certificate.

13 miles northwest is the town of Cockermouth which is the home of Jenning’s Brewery and Wordsworth House, the place where he was born. Wordsworth House is a National Trust house which is about to be remodelled with the help of Lottery funds. There are only a few pieces that actually belonged to the Wordsworth family but each of the rooms are fitted out as they would have been at the time Wordsworth was born. The Wordsworth paraphernalia is more from his family rather than his poetry. There is a massive garden and terrace where apparently the children loved to play. A river flows along the bottom of the property – The Cocker I believe.

I didn’t fit in a tour of the Jennings Brewery but I did manage to get 6 stubbies of different local beers for Leigh to try.

On the way back I got some pics of Bassenthwaite Lake about halfway between Cockermouth and Keswick. Yet another massive spread of water – there are so many up here, something you just don’t get at home.