A look at Wray Castle as part of my series about my recent holiday in the Lake District.
Welcome to the latest instalment in my series about my recent holiday in the Lake District. We are looking at Wray Castle in this post. Having seen if from afar various times earlier on the Monday we visited it as our last activity of that day before heading back to the cottage.
A 19TH CENTURY FOLLY
Castle Wray is not a real castle, it was built in the mid 19th century for a certain Dr Dalton. It is approached from a jetty with a boathouse that has been designed to look ruined. There is a very scenic pathway up from there to the castle itself. Immediately outside the castle there are some incredible views out over the lake. There is a large jackdaw population in this part of the world, and the castle was designed with various ways for the birds to fly in. They are a decent substitute for ravens, belonging to the same family. I did not actually go into the castle, preferring to enjoy the scenery outside.
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.
A look at the number and variety of boats to be seen on Windermere.
Welcome to the next post in the series about my holiday in the Lake District. All the photographs I took are now edited and ready for use. Today, having begun my coverage of cruising on Windermere yesterday I am focussing specifically on the boats that were on show.
BOATS ON WINDERMERE
We were blessed with excellent weather for the entirety of our stay in the Lake District, which meant that all manner of boats were out and about from tiny one person crafts to the cruise boats that we travelled on. While Windermere operates strict speed limits the variety of boats is not so limited, as the photo gallery below shows…
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…
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.
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