adventure: falling water

holiday: adventures 3

And the adventures continue...

The longer I stay in England the more I feel I will miss my friends and the country itself so much when I go, but I also know that the longer I stay away from home, the more I will miss my friends and the USA. I'm definitely stuck in one of those ironically nice conundrums.

After playing with Mr. Tubby I came back and made peach raspberry pie for my dessert-needing friends. By the time it was out it was about 10pm. Late night pie.

I went to Cat's flat to watch Badlands. I had been looking forward to seeing it very much and it lived up to the anticipation for me :)

The view from her windows.

On Wednesday I met up with Zoe (my one-day famous theatre director friend), to see her friend Morgan in an all-men cast of Midsummer Night's Dream. She had directed this company in previous summers so was interested in how they would be without her...

Unfortuntately the English summer rose to its reputation and started pissing it down, so after sitting under umbrellas (did I mention it was outdoor theatre?) for awhile and getting ourselves suitably soaked they came on and said the show would have to end :( So while we waited for Morgan and the guys to pack up the whole stage etc we went and got drinks as big as our heads. Literally. You needed both those handles.

Secretly we both enjoyed catching up more rather than watching the theatre, but shh don't tell anyone.

Now that I've been typing I think I actually saw this slug on Monday night after seeing Tree of Life again with Vicky. This picture is almost life size...

It was raining so much last week. We put out buckets.

Thursday night we went to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Very funny. And on the way we passed this cool art installation outside the National Gallery. It's supposed to bring art and nature together. This one was done after Van Gogh's paintings.

Then Friday night I went to see Dom's band (California Gypsies) play near Tottenham Court Rd. They're really good, check them out :)

friends: tubbins

hello Mr. Tubby

pembrokeshire: whitesands

On the Sunday I went on a walk down to Whitesands beach while Ste went coasteering (the main reason we came to Pembrokeshire was to cash in on his Red Letter Day birthday present from his mom). The walk was beautiful and peaceful and only took about 40 minutes from the town we were staying in, but the roar of the waves was the best part of my arrival :)

It really reminded me that I am a country girl at heart :)

pembrokeshire

This is a beautiful place.

I want to go back.

Though I think it may be rainier now.

More later.

end of summer

For the last summer vacation of 2010 we went to Lyme Regis for a long weekend to go fossil hunting :) We came back with lots of fossil loot- if you want to see a photo skip to the end- and had an all around very fun time, especially as the sun graced us with its presence on the Monday :)

walking on rocks after the tide is out

Lyme harbour (tide in)

can you imagine a place more beautiful?

when the tide is in, adventurous fossil hunters (us) climb out on the slippy rocks to get to the beach with good fossils...

seaweed rock

I have a thing for rocks, it goes back to when I was little and would come home with rocks in my pockets. I like these knobbly, sea-worn ones

You can see how the cliff breaks away in layer on the left. That's why there are such good fossils always to be found.

mega-ammonite

whee :) :) :)

big ammonite someone carved out so you can see better detail

And our loot!!!

camping

So then we went camping, not too far out of London.

And camped in a farmer's field, the farmer had not been letting people camp on his farm very long so he was a bit eccentric but very nice and gave us a raised fire pit to use at night.

tent view

morning chicken inspection

wheat field

We went for a long walk on the Saturday along a bit of the Ridgeway (an 85 mile path that has been around for ages), and then along the Grand Union Canal (the same canal that cuts through London)

the gang

horses!

The wind caught our map and plopped it in the canal so Ste had to borrow a fisherman's net to fish it out. The fisherman commented that "I hope that's not the only thing I catch today!"

Cool camouflaged house

Then on the Sunday we went to see the nearby windmill, which was the oldest windmill in England, built inn 1695, until it was a bit destroyed in the 70s, but now it has been restored and is owned by the National Trust.

Puussssshhhhhhhhh!

(you can see who is making the most mock-effort)

And then we went to a Pick Your Own farm, where we did our weekly vegetable shopping

Yum yum!

What a wonderful and exhausting week!!!!

some photos from away

Day 1: We started the journey like last time, train ride from London to Oxenholme Lake District, second train to Windermere, then with a bike ride from Windermere to the cottage, about 8 miles, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't put lots of hills in between :)

we stopped in Ambleside to sit by the lake for a bit before continuing on to the cottage and the hilly part of the ride

Day 2: after a good night's sleep we dragged ourselves out of bed on a rainy morning to start a walk. We began by staying in the valley near the cottage (mistyness=rainyness)

But then we decided to go farther afield, and we saw a lake on the map called Stickle Tarn, so we decided to head for this. One wet hike up a steep mountainside later :) and we came to this...

A beautiful, peaceful lake where we could stop to have some well-earned lunch.

We decided that instead of heading back down the way we came up, we might as well continue along the tops of the mountains until we get to our village and then work our way down from there. I really like the tops of the mountains up there.

Ste spotted this dragonfly so we stopped to photo it.

Our first sighting of where we need to be. The tops of the mountains are very barren, with only some random scrubs, ferns, or knarled trees, and lots of sheep. To entertain us on our walk we made up random poems about sheep and told stories to each other (Ste's was an account of an old fisherman to a young boy about the Loch Ness monster, and mine was about a princess who was trapped in a secret clearing on a mountaintop).

The sun began to disappear so we attempted to half successfully find our way down. Successful in that we got down, unsuccessful in that we ended up on about 5 different 'paths' (possibly just sheep paths) and scaling down rocks at one point. But 6.5 hours later we had some well earned kip.

Day 3: Ste's Mum came up to visit us and we drove over to Coniston and went on a walk a bit up Coniston Old Man. There was a copper mine nearby which you can kind of see.

We found this little cottage, which I will still pretend is called 'Bend or Bump', though others think otherwise...

Ste and his Mum

We also went down by the lake in Coniston, and there were lots and lots of female ducks, two swans, a signet, and a tiny baby duck

I thought this baby was small and then I spotted....

this teeny tiny fellow! This mother was very protective (rightly so!) and herded all other ducks away from her baby if they got too close.

Later we retired back to the cottage for some tea and cake :)

Day 4: We slept in a bit and then biked into Ambleside to check out boat time tables and then parked our bikes to go for a walk in the hills behind the village.

And we spotted a wee bunny! (can you see him?)

Looking back into Ambleside.

A pretty mountain stream

We biked back to the cottage after our walk (2 hours) and had well-earned food. We cooked every day while up there. There is a pub in the village where we had some good beers, but it just serves typical pub food so we stuck to making our own. I am slightly ashamed to say we got through about a dozen potatoes, a block of butter, a bag of pasta, 4 chunks of local cheese, a dozen eggs, and of course lots of veggies during our stay :)

Day 5: I convinced Ste it would be a good idea to go up and over the mountain behind the cottage to Grasmere, the next village over, separated by the mountain.

We did stop in the church near the cottage before going on the walk as Ste noticed they would be selling cakes, so we bought some homemade flapjack and a chocolate peppermint slice and a puzzle to play later, then started on our walk.

This photo was to remind us how to get back down on the easy path instead of having to scramble like we usually do...

Once in Grasmere we walked around the lake and decided to explore the village. Ste contemplated that Wordsworth might be buried here, so after going a bit further, seeing there was a museum dedicated to Wordsworth in Grasmere, and yes, his grave was here, we went back to the cemetary and found his grave. We also sat on the bench nearby and had a sandwich.

We then continued on to Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth spent 8 years, first as a bachelor living with his sister, then as a married man, and then with his three children and random family relations and friends! (like Coleridge)

There was also a good museum there with lots of original paintings from British artists, and we went on a very informative tour around the house. Dove Cottage was the third house to become a museum in Britain, after Shakespeare's and Milton's!

When we were done we decided to continue around Lake Grasmere until we could go sit by it and we found a pleasant spot to do so, we had the rest of our lunch and I sketched a little picture of the view, and then we hiked back up and down the mountain without a hitch (I dubbed this walk 'The Ups and the Downs')

The next day we packed up, biked to Ambleside and got a boat up to Bowness and then biked from there to Windermere and then got the trains back to London and biked back home.

AND THEN, we got picked up to go camping for the weekend...........