Tag: Ambleside

Lake District 2023 18: Getting Home

The final post in my series about my holiday in the Lake District, detailing the journey home.

Welcome to the final post in my series about my holiday in the Lake District. In it I talk about my journey back to King’s Lynn.

A MULTI-MODAL JOURNEY

Thursday was the only day on which I could travel home – the next non-strike day was the following Tuesday by when I was due back at work. I had been warned by thetrainline.com of trouble on the Ely-King’s Lynn portion of the journey – they had wanted to me to book a whole new journey, but I knew better – so long as I could get as far as Peterborough I could then get a bus to King’s Lynn, and there is no difference in the time taken to walk from the bus station to my home and that from the train station. Thus I was prepared for a journey using three modes of wheeled transport plus walking.

THE JOURNEY

My parents gave me a lift from Ambleside to Oxenholme the Lake District, getting me there well before my train was due. The train arrived five minutes late, which is early by Avanti’s usual standards. The train was a little crowded, but I had a reserved seat, and it was otherwise uneventful.

At Preston I had to change to another Avanti service, as the one I was on ran non-stop between Warrington and London, and my second change was at Birmingham New Street. This train was also fairly crowded.

At Birmingham New Street I boarded a service bound ultimately for Norwich. This train ran exactly according to schedule, and it turned out that I had just under a 20 minute wait at Peterborough for the bus to King’s Lynn.

ExCel proved to among the bus routes on which no single journey costs more than £2, a substantial saving on previous fares on that route (Lynx, whose buses I use to get to and from work are not as yet part of this scheme). Arriving at King’s Lynn bus station, as unappealing as that location is, was something of a relief – I knew for certain at that point that last possibility of trouble was behind me, which given the situation in which I made that journey was no small thing.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here are my pictures from this day…

Crossing the Great Ouse by bus, the moment I regard as the end of the holiday.
You will be seeing more of this swan family in posts to come, although the eight cygnets here have been reduced in number to six.

Lake District 2023 7: Cruising on Windermere II

A second post about cruising on Windermere as part of my series about my holiday in the Lake District.

Welcome to the latest post in my series about my holiday in the Lake District. This post completes the general picture of cruising on Windermere.

AN OUTLINE OF THE ROUTE

After Bowness the boat went on down Windermere to a place dubbed Lakeside from which a steam railway runs to Haverthwaite (this journey will get a post of its own later in this series). Then we journeyed back to Bowness and Ambleside, paused for an hour in Ambleside before taking the Green route to Wray Castle, Brockhole and back to Ambleside. We stopped to visit Wray Castle, which will get a separate post later. On the Tuesday morning we completed our cruising activities with a trip to Brockhole (also a post in this series). At that point we switched transport modes to buses for the rest of our explorations on Tuesday and all day on Wednesday.

CRUISING THE LAKE

The Lakeside Pier is almost as far from Ambleside Waterhead as one can get and still be on Windermere, so these cruises between them gave us a view of the entirety of the lake (and I was sat outside in good viewing positions for the whole of it). Wray Castle pier gives a clue as to what is to come – the boathouse is a remarkable structure in its own right. Brockhole pier is equally distinctive in its own way, advertising what that location has to offer in no uncertain terms.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Lake District 2023 5: Cruising on Windermere: Ambleside to Bowness

A look at the first part of the lake cruising experience that occupied most of Monday. This post focusses on Ambleside to Bowness.

Welcome to the latest post in my series about my holiday in the Lake District. This post commences coverage of the first major activity of the holiday, cruising on the lake. We did two separate cruises on the Monday, and this post deals with the first part of the first cruise. the journey from Ambleside to Bowness.

GETTING TO THE PIER

Ambleside Pier (known as Waterhead) is slightly separate from then town itself, and the route to it poses one question: take the main road or divert down a side road. On the Monday morning my parents stuck to the main road while I went the other way. The main road is possibly the quicker route, but the other is undoubtedly pleasanter walking, reflected in the fact that we all went back to our cottage in the evening by that route. We were at the pier in good time and able to take good seats on the boat for the journey.

THE CRUISING EXPERIENCE

In spite of the shocking behaviour of the local water company Windermere remains a very scenic lake, and we benefitted from very pleasant weather, which meant the journey was smooth. There are lots of things to see while travelling on the lake, and I kept my camera busy for most of the day.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Even with many photographs filed elsewhere and this being only one part of the first cruise there is a generous gallery to finish this post…

Lake District 2023 4: Exploring Ambleside

A look at Ambleside, as I get into the meat of my series about my holiday in the Lake District.

I am back from my short holiday in the Lake District, though I still have quite a lot of photos to edit. This post (see here for the earlier ones, posted while I was there).

AMBLESIDE

On the Saturday evening we did a small amount of exploring the town, including consuming beers at the bar of the cinema (we had gone the wrong way from the cottage we were staying in, and missed the pubs which we then saw on our walk back). The following day we visited the pier to find out details about lake cruises, and decided to do that on the Monday. We walked round the lakeside as far as a place called Low Wood Bay, a small resort for the seriously well heeled, and got a bus back into Ambleside. After the Monday we took one more boat ride on Tuesday morning, but thereafter focussed our attentions on the excellent bus network as a way to get from place to place. Ambleside Bus Interchange proved very well located for our purposes, a very short walk from the cottage in which we were staying.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here are the first set of Ambleside pictures (there will be at least one further pure Ambleside post), which include a few pointers to what else will be coming up later in the series…

A map of Ambleside – click to view at full size.

An Epic Backlog of Images

Some hints of what is to come on this blog when I have edited all the pictures I have from my holiday in the Lake District.

After yesterday’s boat trips around Windermere and today’s visits to Brockholes, Grasmere (“The Grasmere Grudge” for my fellow Tope fans) and Keswick (where in Tope’s lake mysteries series main protagonists Persimmon ‘Simmy’ Brown’s other half Christopher Henderson works as an auctioneer) I have a huge number of images to edit and prep for showing on this blog. However, I though this was a good moment to signpost some of the many forthcoming posts about this holiday.

AMBLESIDE GENERALLY

Ambleside is a fine little town in its own right, and since every trip starts with a walk to some part of Ambleside or other (my parents car has remained parked just below the cottage in which we are staying since our arrival on Saturday and will do so until Thursday morning when my journey home begins) opportunities for taking photographs in and around Ambleside have abounded.

A clue as to why the car is not needed once one has arrived in Ambleside – services are frequent.

ON WINDERMERE

The atrocious behaviour of the local water company notwithstanding (they have been polluting Windermere by pumping raw sewage into it) Windermere remains very scenic, and the boat trips I have taken have been exceedingly enjoyable.

BIRDS OF WINDERMERE

Windermere is home to a considerable quantity of birdlife (I have am not close to editing all my bird images yet), and I have managed to capture a not entirely insignificant fraction of it.

BOATS OF WINDERMERE

For very obvious reasons there are tight speed limits on Windermere, but nonetheless a considerable variety of watercraft make use of it.

A STEAM RIDE

One of the boat drop of points for the big Windermere Cruise is called Lakeside, and is one terminus of a heritage railway which follows the line of Windermere’s exit river towards the Irish sea. It travels a short distance to a place called Haverthwaite, and then back to get another boat onwards, and is a fun little journey.

CASTLE WRAY

The last place for which I have any edited images is Castle Wray, which I captured from afar a number of times before we actually landed at it’s boathouse on Monday evening. The close pictures are among the unedited at the moment. It is not a real castle – it was built in the 1840s for a wealthy doctor.

Lake District – Getting There

Setting the scene for a series of posts about a short holiday I am enjoying in Ambleside by describing the journey there.

Welcome to what will be the first of a series of posts about a short holiday I am taking in the Lake District. My parents and I are staying in a small cottage above the town of Ambleside (for fans of Rebecca Tope think “The Ambleside Alibi”). This post sets the scene by describing my journey from King’s Lynn to Ambleside.

KINGS LYNN TO ELY

I left my bungalow, situated just north of King’s Lynn, at 9:00 yesterday morning as I had planned to do. This meant that I got to the train station with time to spare before my train, the 09:42 to Cambridge (something must have been happening south of Cambridge as the service usually runs through to London). The train set off exactly when it was supposed to and chugged into Ely at 10:15AM.

ELY TO MANCHESTER PICCADILLY

The second and longest section of my train odyssey was part of a long cross country route (the full route is Norwich to Liverpool Lime Street). The train on this route consists of two carriages and there are no reserved seats. Fortunately, although it was pretty full at times it was never seriously close to ‘sardine can on wheels’ territory. I had some familiarity with the route as far as Sheffield, but beyond Sheffield was all new to me.

MANCHESTER PICCADILLY TO PRESTON

The third leg of the journey took me into the heart of Lancashire, the the county town of Preston. This route had some features of interest, and for the third time out of three on the day it ran according to schedule. Given that the final leg of my rail journey was in the incapable hands of Avanti I did not expect to make it four out of four.

PRESTON TO OXENHOLME THE LAKE DISTRICT

The final section of my rail journey took me into the heart of the Lake District. I should have got into Oxenholme at 16:09, but the train for this last section was running 20 minutes late (which probably counts as punctual by Avanti’s unique standards). It was scenic, but I could not capture any of it with my camera because the “window” seat that I had reserved turned out to give me access to about 10% of said window, so I could see things, but not focus the camera on them. I got pictures from most of the rest of the route.

THE REST OF THE JOURNEY

After a minor confusion at Oxenholme, where my parents were collecting me in their car, having made their own way up from Cornwall, we found our way to the location given for our cottage, but the cottage was so well concealed that it took several attempts to actually locate it. There then turned out to be a few other problems with it – my parents bedroom contains a nasty hazard in that the bedroom door leads straight on to the staircase. I will go into more detail about Ambleside in my next post.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…