Tag: Cruises

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.