May 17, 2011 - Keswick & Kendal

Sarah and I had the day off today, so we walked up to Grasmere and caught the bus north to Keswick to see the Castlerigg stone circle and the town. We had lots of cloud cover today, but very little rain, so it was a good day for sight-seeing. We got to the stone circle around 11am and there were very few people at that time, so I was able to get photos without lots of tourist in them! I guess we got lucky, because it got rather crowded as we were leaving. An older English couple were kind enough to point us in the direction of a another "forest & dale" walk to the town, so we had another scenic 2 mile walk into town. By the time we got to Keswick, Sarah was dying for coffee, as we had to toss our newly bought hot beverages before getting on the bus, so we quickly found a cafe and had lunch (well earned after no breakfast and miles of walking!).

After lunch, we explored Keswick and then grabbed the bus southbound to Kendal for more exploring. Kendal is a bigger town than Keswick and not on the lakes, so neither of us were as taken with it as the others we've seen so far, but glad we went anyway (we thought we should get our money out of the tourist-priced, day pass bus fare of 9.75 pounds!).

Anyway, we left Kendal around 5:45pm after starting out this morning at 8am and arrived back in Rydal at 6:30pm. We had dinner at the Badger Bar & Pub and walked the remaining .5 mile back to Nab Cottage, all tuckered out after 12 hours on the go!

I'm glad I have tomorrow off too, so I can recover from today! I'll probably skip blogging tomorrow, as it's due to rain more heavily, so I'll probably just enjoy a day of relaxing and reading...