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Tuesday 30th June
A drive around the Lakes District
After yesterdays energising 7 mile walk we thought we would restrict ourselves to some shorter walks and also take in a couple of lakes further on from where we had got to yesterday.
We were a little later rising and after breakfast took RR out onto the road and headed back toewards the lakes.
Our first stop,where we would spend most of the day,was Keswick which is probably the most touristy of the towns and villages that make up the area.
We found a park in a local street to avoid the meters and took a stroll through the centre of the small town that was alive with the expected tourists like us wandering along with time on their hands.
We had ideas of taking in a couple of the local attractions and we discovered they were next door to each other.
First there was the reliving of our school days and ‘pencils’.
The Cumberland Pencil company which has manufactured pencils for over 150 years was founded in Keswick using graphite from a nearby mine.Today the raw material comes from other countries in the world but the process of making pencils remains
virtually unchanged other than the machinery is more modern and can produce greater volumes faster.
We took the tour of the museum and the video which outlined the history and process of pencil making.
An interesting piece of history was that the British government in the early days after the discovery of the graphite mine had to post the army here to protect the place as graphite was in such high demand that it was being smuggled out of the country.
Our memories of the pencils we used at school were awakened as we saw in the display cases tins of “Lakeland” coloured pencils and also a selection in the soft plastic packet that they also used to come in.
Next door was the James Bond museum and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see what had been put together about our(or should I say my) favourite movie character.
The museum was a private collection of mainly cars used in many of the earlier movies,some the actual ones and others prototypes.There were also gadgets and other bits of equipment used by Bond.It wasn’t an extensive collection and there was a hint in some of the displays that the guy
who owned the stuff had run out of money to complete some of the restoration.However it was an interesting display and still worth the visit.
We had packed a picnic so we strolled off towards the lake front of DerwentWater and had lunch in the gardens along with dozens of other tourists.
The town didn’t seem to have a lot of hotel accommodation but there were dozens of B&B which we had noticed on our walking since parking the car in the morning.
We took a couple of short walks after lunch around the lakeside and although we could have walked around the entire lake we decided that a leisurely stroll over a shorter distance was all we needed today.
We returned to the car and drove on further to take in Lake Bassenthwaite. This lake was further up the narrow valley so that the hills that rose from the lakeside were sharper and steeper making it more like some of our South Island lakes in appearance.
We didn’t make a stop here and instead completed the full circle and rejoined the road back to Kendal.
Because the time before dinner has been so social we called into Booths and
picked up a selection of local crafted beers with unusual names including another Hobgoblin that we enjoyed previously in Settle.
Again after dinner with another warm and calm evening we sat out and chatted enjoying coffee and the now familiar night cap of Damson Gin,a local liquor made from Damson plums.I am afraid at the rate I am going I will clean the bottle off for our hosts!!
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