Back to Blighty

Bleary-eyed, I gazed blankly through the dusty windows, trying to imprint the Scottish scenery on my retinas as I travelled south once more. It seemed the early morning dash to get myself on the bus had used up my quota of energy for the time being, and I lost the struggle to prop my eyes open - although a dazzling play of light on the insides of my eyelids alerted me to take a peek when passing tourist hotspot Loch Lomond, alight in a blaze of sunshine as the bus strobed through the trees along the lakeside.

I swapped bus for train after an hour's wait in Glasgow, where a commuting Scotsman admired my journal, with all the "wee headin's and that." I continued writing on the train, but was absently watching the countryside slip away when all of a sudden I just knew we'd crossed the border, and after twenty days in Scotland I was back in England. There must have been some minuscule difference I wasn't even aware of to make me so certain, because sure enough, the next town was English.

Only a few hours later I was reading bus timetables at a bed and breakfast in Windermere. The shift to winter service in this part of the country was severe. Less than half the services were still running, and most of the visitor attractions were closed. Baffled by out of date information but determined to see something of the famous district, I ate something cheap and nasty at a local pub and thought I'd figure it out in the morning.

After I'd done full justice to my morning egg, tomato, spicy sausages, beans, bacon and hashbrowns, I moved from the B&B to the cheaper hostel down the road, then positioned myself at the bus station for a trip around Lake Windermere to Coniston. A patient crowd of other potential passengers grew around me. The bus was over fifteen minutes late - not a huge deal, except when there aren't that many buses. In this case, it meant missing the promised onward connection at the lakehead town of Ambleside, and the next one would not be along for two hours.

Fed up, I located the Ambleside Visitor Centre, and the staff couldn't have been kinder. They checked the time of the next bus against the launch trip I wanted to take, and since they overlapped, arranged for the captain to wait the boat for me. That sorted, they suggested a short walk, to fill in the time until the next bus. All very sweet, it should have gone a long way towards calming me down, except that as helpful as they were, no-one gave the slightest sign of understanding why an unplanned two hour stop might be annoying, or that such a stop meant the rest of the day would be curtailed. It was like being in a parallel universe with benignly accommodating aliens. I climbed the hill to the waterfalls, and they and the banks covered with drifts of autumn leaves were indeed very pretty, but still I glowered, because that wasn't the point.

I made the bus, which despite being two minutes late itself, pulled out once again without meeting the connecting Windermere service. Even though he was behind schedule, the driver was happy to idle the bus in the middle of the road any time a local felt like a chat. A parallel universe indeed, and no doubt a happier and more relaxed one, as long as you aren't a traveller with attractions to visit and launches waiting for you. When I scrambled off the bus and ran up the pier at Waterhead I was sure I'd find the launch had given me up for lost - but there it was, waiting for me, just as unhurried as everyone else.

The weather was grim and Coniston Water was a leaden sheet, with forbidding clouds piling up in the skies above - but being out on the wind-whipped water was magnificent, even at the launch's matronly pace. Here I was, on the lake so well loved by English novelist Arthur Ransome that it became the setting for a whole series of children's books. I remembered the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons as I saw the farm which inspired the fictional Holly Howe, and wondered which of the peaks around the water had so reminded him of a line in Keats's sonnet that he wrote the poem into the book as inspiration for the characters.

Unable to tear myself away from the grand vistas all around me, I stayed on deck during the tour, and was treated to a spectacle as we neared the jetty - the last record attempt of Speed Week, zooming past in the middle of the lake to accompanying loudspeaker commentary from the shore. Despite the crash of Donald Campbell's Bluebird, the water speed record attempts are still held here annually, and continue to fall. There's an article from the day I was on the lake in the Westmorland Gazette.

I admired the craft in the event area as I made my way up to Coniston village, which is tucked underneath the towering crags of the Old Man of Coniston. Since the impromptu stop earlier in the day had put paid to a hike up the fells, I bussed back, making a stop in the gorgeous village of Hawkeshead on the way.

I would definitely have liked to see more of the lakes, but I was thoroughly put off by my day, and determined to leave the next morning, by the second train (I know it's not so dramatic, but the first train was very, very early!) Nothing which happened that night changed my mind: the hostel was badly run and lacking in vital equipment - desperate exploits such as the team effort to use the stove at tea-time had "don't try this at home" stamped all over them. I made a vow to return in summer some time, and see the area as it should be seen, and I departed at first light - see, I told you that first train was too early.

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