Windermere to Edinburgh

Monday 4^th April

Well rested after a good nights sleep we go and explore Windermere.  Windermere has the largest natural lake in England.  It is a fairly bleak morning, cool and drizzly  as we walk around part of the lake.  We head through the Blackhole National Park which is privately owned, it isn’t a national park as we know it, but still very pleasant indeed.  We pass by a beach beside the lake, a very gravelly beach not what we would call a beach either. 

Windermere is where the writer Beatrix Potter lived and the house where she lived is called Hill Top and is managed by the National Trust. There is a collection of Beatrix Potter's sketches and watercolours in the Beatrix Potter at Hawkshead (a village not far from Hill Top). This is also managed by the National Trust.

We looked through the World of Beatrix Potter’s shop.   I said to Spock that it was a good thing that we were not expecting any grandchildren soon, as I would not have been able to leave there without making a considerable dent in our wallets.  The Shop was amazing they had so many lovely treasures.  We did buy a few little things, but being a Beatrix Potter lover I would have loved so much more.  

From Windermere we headed off to Hadrian’s wall.  We weaved our way through the tiny roads admiring the beautiful countryside as we made slow but steady progress.  Sheep grazed beside the roads and they ambled across the roads slowly, almost oblivious to our comings and goings.   The rain persisted for most of the day and the temperature was about 6 degrees.  Our wettest and bleakest day to date. 

Hadrian’s wall crosses beautiful and varied landscape.  Starting in the lowlands of the Solway coast, it crosses the lush hills east of Carlisle to the bleak windy ridge of basalt rock known as Whin Sill overlooking Northumberland National Park, and ends in the urban sprawl of Newcastle.  It is reported that the most spectacular section is between Brampton and Corbridge.  We picked it up just out of Brampton  at Haltwhistle

 

The enormous wall begun in AD 122, named after the emperor who ordered it built, emperor Hadrian. It is a 73 mile stone wall.   The wall was the most heavily fortified border in the Empire. In addition to its role as a military fortification, it is thought that many of the gates through the wall would have served as custom posts to allow trade and levy taxation.

Well we have seen and pee'd at Hadrian’s wall, took a few photo’s but due to the weather we got on our bike and moved onto Edinburgh.