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Oh dear, still wet this morning!! The plan was to take some great photos of the lakes during this visit, but they look very drab and uninteresting in these weather conditions! We decided that we would head to Cockermouth to visit Wordsworth’s birthplace. However, the house where he was born doesn’t open until 11.00am so we needed to fill in some time. We decided to drive over to the coast and do a bit of a loop back to Cockermouth to fill in an hour or so. We drove straight past Cockermouth on the A66 to Workington and then headed up the coast to Maryport where we were the first visitors of the day at the Stenhouse Roman Museum. The museum has a very impressive collection of altar stones from the old Roman fort and a very interesting video about the Roman occupation along the coast from Maryport to Carlisle (around 50 miles north) that complemented the protection provided by Hadrian’s wall.
From Maryport we drove back towards Cockermouth on the A594. With the weather still pretty ordinary it was very busy in town. For some reason everyone is in town rather than out hiking?! We had a look around
the Wordsworth House and Garden which is operated by the National Trust. They have done a great job with the display! They have heaps of volunteers in the property dressed in period costume and providing demonstrations in the kitchen and in the children’s bedroom and even playing the harpsichord in the drawing room.
With the weather clearing a little (?) we decided to drive down to a couple of the lesser known lakes over on the western side of the Lake District - Ennerdale Water and Loweswater. We had to travel on some pretty minor roads to reach these lakes which made for an interesting afternoon negotiating the hedgerows!! The weather continued to improve through the afternoon so by the time that we reached Crummock Water it was actually very pleasant. From Buttermere on the B5289 we took another minor road over to Braithwaite.
Back on the A66 we headed east towards Penrith. We took a small diversion to the Castlerigg Stone Circle. According to the map we visited this stone circle in 1993, but neither of us could recall it so we drove out to it anyway. I will have to check the photo album to see
if we have been before?! When we reached the A5091 we turned south towards Windemere. Once again we were aiming to take the road less travelled by passing over Kirkstone Pass which is the highest road in the Lake District at 1498 feet. As we came over the pass we saw a couple of jet planes zoom by overhead. The last section down into Ambleside is known as The Struggle and stagecoach passengers had to disembark before this narrow, twisting section was attempted!! The verdict is that these roads were nowhere near as exciting as those we tackled on Tuesday when we drove over Hardknott Pass … or maybe we are getting a bit blasé after three days of very steep and/or extremely narrow roads??!
Back in Ambleside it was frantic and it was rather late in the day to be finding a bed for the night! We pulled into virtually the first accommodation that we came to at Brathay Lodge since it indicated that it still had vacancies for tonight. We knew it would be at the pricey end, but didn’t feel much like hunting out a bargain. We were showed two rooms - a very small one
and a really luxurious one with a four poster bed. We decided to splurge on the big room!!
The technology is still beating us as we have not been able to log in using our 3G modem due to lack of coverage. Tonight we thought that we would be able to use Brathay’s wi-fi, but it crashed yesterday afternoon and he is struggling to get it back on-line. The owner is a bit stressed as all of his bookings are done on-line and he is worried that the TIC is going to think he has rooms available when he doesn’t. Us not being able to start our Travel Blog is inconsequential by comparison!! We will definitely have to get the blog started over the weekend when we are at Kath and Albert’s!!
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Dave
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Roman museum at Maryport
Hi! As an ex-Maryport resident, I should let you know that the museum is the Senhouse museum, not Stenhouse. Named after Humphrey Senhouse who developed the town into a port, naming it after his wife. Happy travels, Dave