The Long Way Around

Having just gotten back from a weekend in York, I sat down to write a blog when to my horror I discovered that I never finished blogging about the Adventures of Amanda and Mumsy in England! So, just a wee bit late, here’s what we did on our last full day in the UK.

Since I had enjoyed my previous day trip to Lake Windermere so much, I decided to take Mumsy and Don up there for the day. Our first hiccup in a long line of hiccups came when I realized that the next bus to Windermere was at 11:00. Not wanting to wait until then to leave, I did a little research online. One one of the tourist websites devoted to the Lakes region, a reader had written in that one of her favorite things to do was to go to a park at the very foot of the lake called Fell Foot park and then take the ferry across to Lakeside where you could catch one of the Steamer boats that made trips around the lake to Bowness and Ambleside. On a map, Fell Foot Park appeared to be connected to Newby Bridge. Newby Bridge had a bus running every hour, and since we were intending to take a Steamboat ride anyway, this seemed a brilliant way to get to the lake without waiting until the 11 o’clock bus.

Newby Bridge is a quaint little town that I had only ever passed through on the bus or gotten off at to switch buses, so I was interested to see the town. We got off the bus and headed over the little stone bridge to the river that feeds into Windermere.

After wandering around for a bit, I decided to go into the nearby hotel and ask how to get to Fell Foot Park, since I did not see any signs. Cue the first problem of the day. Apparently the land in between Newby Bridge and Fell Foot Park is privately owned and there was no public throughway. The woman gave us directions to walk to the park, but unfortunately they were on a fairly busy road that had no discernable shoulder or sidewalk. 20 minutes later and several squeals of alarm by Mumsy later, we arrived at Fell Foot Park.

All of Mumsy’s favorite things in one place- bathroom, tea and information!

The bottom of Lake Windermere

After Mumsy did two of her favorite things – pee and drink tea with scones, we decided to ask where the ferry to the other side of the lake left from. Cue problem number two. The ferry was not running that day. AND, they had no idea what time the next bus would go by or even where the closest bus stop was. This was so frustrating because we could see where we needed to be and could even have swam if it weren’t on the chilly side.

Since we had no idea how to catch a bus, we decided to walk back to Newby Bridge, where I knew the bus to Windermere stopped. As we were about 5 minutes from the bus stop, the Windermere bus roared past us, at which point I got very upset and complained about myself for the next 5 minutes. Back at Newby Bridge, we saw that we could walk up to Lakeside and take the boat, so we decided to try this. We started walking once again along a busy road, but then our luck changed and we found a hiking trail along the road that lead almost all the way to Lakeside, where we arrived in plenty of time to catch the next boat. Once we finally got on the boat, I was pretty excited. One – because we weren’t walking anymore, and two because I love boats. Plus, I hadn’t been on this part of the lake before.

We arrived in Bowness later than we would have if we had just taken the bus at 11, but with a mini-adventure under our belts. First order of business was to eat and then we set out to do a little shopping and to lose Don while he was taking pictures (this is a normal occurrence). We then set off for Ambleside, where Kevin was to meet us in a few hours after he got out of work. Once again, we did some shopping, and then we stopped to get some tea and dessert. Kevin was running late after hitting some traffic, so we walked back down to the lake and once again lost Don while he took some pictures.

I wonder where Cailin and I get our need to stick our tongues out in photos from?

Mumsy is annoyed that Don has gone missing

Kevin finally showed up 2 hours past the time he expected, having gotten stuck in horrible traffic. We set out to drive up Kirkstone Pass with Mumsy and Don, since it seems to be the place to take visitors (Cailin, John and Katie will most likely get taken up as well). Either Kevin’s driving has gotten better (unlikely) or it is not as scary in the backseat because it was not nearly as bad as I remembered. Mumsy didn’t believe that the road was really a two direction road. We tried to tell her that this was actually not the smallest road we had been on, but she didn’t believe us.

The road up.

We headed home with the intention of getting some food and packing, but we hit yet another problem - the traffic Kevin was stuck in earlier. We had incorrectly assumed that it would be cleared up by then, but we were wrong! After sitting and not moving an inch for a good 2o minutes, we decided to turn around and trust the GPS to find us a different way home. Unfortunately, it kept trying to send us back to the road we were on. Kevin just ignored the demands of the GPS to TURN LEFT and we wound up on some of the roads we had told Mumsy about. Don even snapped a good picture of how narrow these roads were.

We finally made it home hours later and starving. Poor Kevin sat in the equivalent of 5 hours of traffic and thus poured himself a LARGE glass of scotch (rivaling even John Felty’s recent scotch consumption) and we wearily packed and headed to bed.

As irritating as all the problems were, we did get to show Mumsy and Don the real English countryside so that made it (only slightly) less annoying.

Check back tomorrow for Kevin and I’s trip to the Original York. Sadly Cailin, I could find no evidence that this was the home of the York Peppermint Patty.