Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Aside from beginning and ending in Eskdale/Ravenglass we'd reached our only definite destination of the hike: Beatrix Potter. OK, so a dead author of childrens' stories isn't a destination per se. But Hawkshead is home of the National Trust's Beatrix Potter Gallery, and just down the road in Near Sawrey you can find Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's home. Yaël was particularly keen on visiting Hill Top, so it became a mandatory part of our Lakes hike.

Naughty Peter Rabbit!

We spent some time that morning in the gallery in Hawkshead, which contains a lot of original artwork and writing by Potter. Most interestingly it reveals a side of Beatrix Potter that I wasn't aware of: she was quite the naturalist! She had an interest in mycology and also the breeding of sheep, the latter of which seems to have become a particular occupation of her time in her latter years. I have to admit I find this much more interesting than Peter Rabbit; though her stories of rabbits, ducks, kittens, and whathaveyou are a memorable and maybe formative part of my childhood.

We hopped on a mountain goat (bus) to Hill Top from Hawkshead, today was to be a day of rest. Especially considering the state of Yaël's knee. Hill Top revealed further interesting things about Beatrix, a singularly interesting woman!

At Hill Top

Another point of interest is her involvement with the National Trust, which she lent a lot of her time to. Not only that though. One of Beatrix Potter's more unusual hobbies was collecting farms, well that's what it looks like she did. The royalties from Peter Rabbit and friends giving her the means to do this. She was particularly interested in maintaining the rural landscape and culture she loved, and I guess it made sense that one way to do this was to own it all! When she died she left her land to the National Trust, all of it I believe. It amounted to 4000 acres of the Lake District! I knew she was well off from her writing, but I'd never have imagined she'd owned such an insane amount of northern English countryside.

After perusing all the interesting artefacts in Beatrix Potter's house we had an off-ration lunch at the pub next door, Tower Bank Arms if Google informs me correctly. Excellent steak and ale stew and crispy battered fish with chips. Very hard to fit it all in though, after a few days on pack rations. How come every pub we went to has a brilliant range of real ale? Those Cumbrians seem to have excellent taste in beer!

Windermere (from the vehicle ferry)

From Hill Top we walked down to the passenger and vehicle ferry that crosses Windermere, a bargain at 50p per person! This took us to Bowness where we stopped briefly to post items bought from the National Trust home so that we didn't have to carry them around with us.

Our next leg of travelling was by boat again, a ferry ride from Bowness to Ambleside at the north of Windermere. It was nice to just relax and watch the scenery pass by for a change. The scenery included a couple of very low fly-overs by pairs of modern airforce jets, unexpected but interesting. We got to Ambleside at about 17:30, unfortunatelty this was too late to find an open chemist, we'd hoped to pick up a knee brace for Yaël. So we trekked through the town, noting the strange high density of camping and climbing stores. Is there a huge local interest in camping and climbing, or do tourists come all the way to Ambleside to buy their gear? Bowness had a similarly high density of such shops.

Windermere (from south of Loughrigg Fell)

From Ambleside we crossed the ridge south of Loughrigg Fell, destined for Loughrigg Tarn on the west of the ridge. This crossing provided some particularly wonderful views down Windermere. Yaël's knee was giving her obvious pain though, despite the mostly restful day. I actually think that being easier on the knee for a day probably just made it feel worse in the short term (these things tend to seize up when your rest them I find.) Though it may also have something to do with the fact we were climbing over yet another ridge! It was quite an easy one though, with a steep but solid road up, a fairly flat walk at the top, then a friendly gradual descent. Once over we reached Tarn Foot Farm, the location of our campsite this night.

Pitch at Tarn Foot Farm

We were a bit unsure about this campsite. There was a sign on the door of the farm saying we needed to be there by 18:00, and it was 19:00 by the time we got there. We rang the bell, but nobody answered – though Yaël said she saw someone looking down on us from a window above. We were about to give up and, out of respect for the wishes of whoever wrote the sign, trek off for the next campsite about an hours walk away. However a couple of campers showed up at that point and assured us the farmer would be fine with us sorting it out in the morning, so we settled there for the night. A small campsite on good high ground with a bank and some trees between it and Loughrigg Tarn.

We didn't really walk much at all this day, with the distance between Hawkshead and Near Sawrey being by bus and the stretches over the lake by boat (obviously!) I haven't measured the walking distance precisely, but it seems to be roughly 8km, probably a little under. Our only real uphill of the day was out of Ambleside over the ridge south of Loughrigg Fell, and that was just barely over 200m.