Sandstone and Bogs

Saturday turned out to be a perfect fall day – bright blue skies and that crisp fall air that I love. Since the weather was so nice, Kevin and I decided to head down to Furness Abbey in the morning before he had to work at the Beer Fest.

Furness Abbey is located in Barrow-in-Furness (where Kevin works). Back in the winter when we came on our house hunting trip, we had stayed in a hotel located just up the hill from the abbey. Unfortunately, the abbey was closed the day we walked down.

At one point, Furness Abbey was the local powerhouse, with the Cisternian Monks owning most of the land in the area. ( As a side note – years of watching The Sound of Music had me falsely believing that Nuns lived in abbeys, and Monks in monasteries, but apparently Monks also lived in abbeys. Who Knew?) The abbey was founded in 1123 and originally belonged to an order of Monks called the Savigny, but fell into the hands of the Cisternians roughly 25 years later. The sandstone abbey was remodeled and added to over the next several hundred years until it became one of the most glorious Cisternian Abbeys in England, being shadowed only by Fountains Abbey. The monks of Furness Abbey were the owners of Piel Castle that Kevin and I visited on Friday as well as vast stretches of land on the Isle of Man and across the peninsula where Barrow-in-Furness lies today.

The abbey was disestablished in 1537 during the period of English Reformation under my favorite monarch Henry VIII and gradually fell to ruin. However, the ruins still give a sense of how huge the abbey must have been in its day. Even though only a small portion now remains, you can look across the field and get a sense for how much space the abbey once took up. Additionally, there are several sections of the abbey that still tower in the field. I pulled a Don and made Kevin stand in one of my pictures for perspective, and you can barely see him standing up against the abbey wall.

It’s like “Where’s Waldo”

Kevin had made plans to spend the afternoon with Allister (one of his pub friends) pouring pints at the Swan’s First Annual Beer Festival. Luckily, Allister’s girlfriend Sarka invited me to come for a walk with her and her dog Floss, and thus allowed me to avoid spending the afternoon bored and watching Kev and Allister pour pints. We headed up to High Dam and started our walk by heading up to a lovely lookout point over Windermere.

We then decided that Floss would be a perfect guide to lead us down towards High Dam. However, this turned out to be a serious error as Floss lead us straight into a giant bog. We then decided trusting a dog was probably not the smartest idea, and Sarka took over. She kept apologizing for leading us into bog after bog, but I think we just never left the original bog. I also kept tripping on the high ferns and falling into the bog (big surprise, me tripping). We finally managed to find the path back down to High Dam, and as promised it provided lots of brilliant photo opportunities.

Floss is a bad guide

Sarka and Floss take in the scenery

Regardless of the mess I wound up in, it was a great way to spend a perfect fall day (much better than watching pints being poured in my opinion). Also, the muddly mess I became was (in my opinion) my retribution for laughing hysterically when Cailin got stuck in the mud in South Africa.