I am sitting in a frigid ensuite room in Forestside Lodge at about 3:00 pm. I arrived at the hotel by taxi from Windermere, which cost £14.50 plus £2, but at least not soaked, as I would have been on the bus.
As reserved, the hotel assigned me a single room without ensuite. The toilet and shower were down two halls and through three (Imagine a night trip!) I asked if there were any ensuites, and the manager said he would keep me in mind, as some were on hold. After a rest, some videoing, a rest, and a walk into and around Grasmere (less than three hours), he said there was a double ensuite in the Lodge (a fairly recent addition). I could have it at the usual single rate. Hooray! (No TV, but the is fine!)
Grasmere is hardly ten minutes away: we are really on the outskirts of the village, which is across the main road and slightly off to one side. The main industries are walking and the poet Wordsworth (who stayed here), so there are coffee shops, outfitting stores, and souvenir shops. The buildings look genuinely Victorian with little renovation. Being August
vacations, the roads, like those in Windermere, Bowness, and Ambleside, are saturated with cars. The air this afternoon was (once it finished raining) so I was able to sit in a park for half an hour.
Earlier this morning, I strolled around Windermere, which has some nice shops and a couple of galleries. It poured rain, so I hid in a book store. (The prices! £5.99, with Can$ 8.99 marked on the back, and the exchange rate at £1 = Can$ 2.48.) I mooned over a few things and thought hard about a suit I saw yesterday in Bowness, but my only serious purchase was ginger ale. It was serious because my stomach doesnt seem to like water when on trains. This was about the last chance to buy in a supermarket.
By the time my purchase was made, the rain back with a vengeance. Of course, my umbrella and rain hats were packed tidily for the walking trips! So I bought a cup of tea (more expensive than 1 litre of ginger ale) to pay the rent on a chair and waited minutes. Then I gave up and hurried to the nearest
Yesterday, up from London on the train I visited Bowness . This was the result of walking through Windermere on one of the main streets and finding myself on the way to Bowness. I detoured through the library – small, but with evidence of efforts similar to our own library. Bowness is the town actually on Lake Windermere. The town of Windermere is now named that because it is the end of the rail line close to the Lake, i.e., the station for Windermere.
The walk is about a mile, although the towns are melding as houses and subdivisions fill in the distance. Bowness is fully a tourist town and has the nervous excitement tourism brings – lots of tacky shops, sweets shops, craft shops, coffee shops – lots of shops. All of these creep down a hill and decant you onto the pier, which is for steam boats, rowing boats, and a ferry – all for tourist consumption. Speaking of consumption – huge swans and ducks occupy the shore, eating everything dropped. After a bit of effort, I
