It looked a little overcast today but the forecast was for it to remain dry all day so with waterproof macs and trousers packed in the rucksack we set off for Keswick and a walk we had found that follows the old railway line. The first problem was finding somewhere to park, the walk is a little old and mentioned a car park that no longer exists and in Keswick town all the car parks are for a maximum of two hours and as the walk is scheduled to take that long we didn’t want to risk it. We eventually managed to find one and our next challenge was to find the start of the walk, following logic that railway stations were historically built on the edge of town and there would be a hotel near it we set off and ultimately found what was very obviously a railway station built by the Victorians with the Keswick Hotel next to it. This walk follows the railway trackbed and passes the site of an old Bobbin mill, making bobbins was once the main industry of this area due to the amount of trees and water to run the mills. As we walked along the path there were notices saying that part of the route was closed due to the flooding in 2015 but we thought that we would be off the path before this section, unfortunately this wasn’t the case so having walked for about a mile and a half we had to turn round and come back which was a shame as we had hoped to climb up Latrigg which although not as high as the walk yesterday would have given us good views over the surrounding area. Rather than miss out on a nice walk we decided to walk to the Castlerigg Stone circle rather than drive up as it is only a mile outside Keswick, this is described as one of the most atmospheric and dramatically sited stone circles in Britain and you can understand why, it is at the top of the hill and surrounded by mountains, well worth the walk as the view is spectacular, luckily the walk back down was a lot easier than the walk up! We got back to the car around lunchtime and decided to drive to Grasmere to have lunch before walking round the town and visiting Dove cottage which was home to William and Mary Wordsworth when he wrote his most famous (in my mind) poem! After lunch we walked up the road to the cottage, you can only visit as part of a guided tour and luckily one was due to start just after we arrived, the house is quite small which is probably the reason they guide you round, it was actually quite interesting, I don’t know much about Wordsworth and hadn’t realised the part his sister played in his writing, or that she lived with him all her life and you can see why the family moved as for such a small house a lot of people seemed to either live there or stay with them. One of the most interesting things was a ‘passport’ they had which was actually a letter issued by the Foreign office providing authority for travel through France and Germany, it was written in French which was the diplomatic language in use in the 18th century, unfortunately we were being ushered out so I wasn’t able to read it in great detail. After we finished the tour we set off for the town of Grasmere which is now very much a tourist town, but is home to the ‘world famous gingerbread’ apparently Grasmere has been famous for its Gingerbread for over 200 years and in 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her journal that she and her brother William craved for the gingerbread! There is a shop which has been open since the mid 1800’s and still sells gingerbread to the secret recipe of Sarah Nelson, I think it is sold from the original shop which is very small only enough room for a couple of people but we went in and brought some, although I am not sure what the fuss is about as I really don’t like ginger but we brought some and Chris has munched his way through half of it so it obviously is quite nice! Then it was time to head back to the apartment and a relax before getting something to eat.
