Hotel Imperial Barrow-in-Furness

... albeit a spouse) and very happily printed out FOC (free of charge) tickets for us, on seeing our BR passes.

We boarded a small ferry called Tern and sat downstairs. It was just too chilly on deck. My car thermometer had been reading 6C on the way over. The ferry happily chugged its way across the lake, taking half an hour to get to Bowness-on-Windermere. We peered at the passing banks through ...

... of this is that you must keep the foot you had on the ground when you caught the ball, on the ground. You may move the other foot in any direction. There are also positions (noted by wearing a vest with certain letter combination) that can only go on certain areas of the court. This really is as complicated as it sounds!

The funny part of this story was how I was dragged into. After working quite excessively on ...

... up the backbone of Weatherlam. The dried bracken was a vivid orange, broken up with jutting grey rocks. As we climbed higher, the bracken gave way to closely cropped green and yellow grass, interspersed with russet coloured reed and wet moss. The local woolly sheep grazed contentedly, barely raising their heads to look at us struggling up through their territory. The still tarns reflected the perfect blue sky and jagged rocks.

Coniston, England, United Kingdom rachelkw

... in the first three hours. We stopped for something to eat before slogging onwards. It was 9.30 when we finally arrived at Coppermine's Cottage, a whole six hours after we'd started off. It was dark and the cottage was empty.

The key was nowhere to be found and I couldn't face driving back down a very long, steep, rickety track with a sheer drop on one side, to look for the rest of the Bewdley ...

... into my flat until 4:00pm that day, it was a very long day. Lancaster city centre happened to be putting on some sort of street festival where the market sellers wore outfits from Edwardian times (I say this because that is what the sign said... I'm not really sure what years this included). I got very excited thinking, "Wow, British people really do dress Victorian all the time." They do not- though they do wear some strange things. Anyway, we grabbed some ...

... playing Jenga, which was hilarious. Mum did surprisingly well considering how much wine she was consuming! We also managed to watch the first episode of the new season of House!! LOVE IT!

Anyway, we took off a few days later. As pretty as the place was, we were glad to leave because the accommodation was grotty (lots of pubic hair and mould in the shared bathroom ...

When we arrived back at Holyhead from our ferry journey from Dublin, we continued our journey up to Blackpool. It was Mark's idea!

Unfortunately we got stuck in traffic for about 1 hour trying to get into Blackpool. Furthermore, when we reached the guesthouse we were meant to be staying in it became apparent that we had accidentally booked the accommodation for the night before! Worse still, they had no more rooms available for us! Luckily, we were ...

You can't visit the Lake District and not hike to the top of a mountain, and being the sheep we are, we decided to go visit the Conniston Old Man. One of the more popular mountains to hike, it has a decent sized path all the way to the top, and isn't particularly hard either. At least, that is, if you researched it before hand and not just turn up and decide on a random path. Yup, we went the back way, and saw barely another soul the entire way up ...

... around the Lake to Ambleside, then found out that 200 meters up the shore it was fenced off. So I chucked some Duck poo at Helen for a laugh, and we drove to Ambleside instead. We had a nice walk around, checking out "Bridge House", which was once a family home even though it's the size of car; then we went up to Stockghyll Force, a very pretty waterfall on the outskirts of Ambleside.

After mooching ...

... in the Lake District, so was basically comprised of hiking stores, pubs and take aways. Not quite the quaint scene I had pictured in my mind, but saying that it was a very scenic place, full of stone buildings and gentle streams. The kind of place I'd like to live but never admit it.

And so, that was day 1. A 500 mile drive, dodgy food and a beautiful campsite on the banks of a stunning lake. Pretty ideal really.