Monday, May 31 - Lake District

We are spending a lot of time in the car. But it is worth it. The Lake District, made famous by the likes of Woodsworth and Beatrix Potter, was stunning, and the car ferry we took across Windermere (Lake) was awesome! It was only about ten minutes, but still awesome!

Eating brownies, waiting for the ferry. The wait was longer than the ride!

Photo courtesy of Sarah Swinney

Haley, Anjuli, Rebecca, and our Audi on the ferry.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Sweeney

Our first visit was John Ruskin’s house Brantwood, a famous naturalist, writer, and one of the predecessors to William Morris, who made the Arts and Crafts movement famous.

Predictably, no interior shots. These places never give us good reasons for not taking photos (Security and Conservation? What does that mean??). The rooms had lots of great room sheets and a lot of signage, so there was a lot to look at. I think besides the views, my favorite part was the rotating exhibition, about the painter Edward Wilson, who was the painter on Scott’s two Antarctic expeditions (they died together on the second one). His watercolors were absolutely beautiful, very poignant. A little bit about the exhibition can be found here.

I took a solo hike up behind the house to get a few of some of the gardens designed by Ruskin. Unfortunately, I hit a solid wall of bugs, and ended up sprinting much higher than intended. I mean, I ended up really high behind the house, kind of wondering what I was doing up there, and also wishing everyone back home could see me trekking around in my boots and skirt. I wound my way across the back slope and ended up in a couple of different gardens.

These are the stairs I headed up...and up...and up...

Beautiful views of the lake

The purgatory garden was especially interesting. A kind of concept garden.

This is the sin Pride...

And these are "carpets of molten fleece", meant to represent Lust...??

Close up. I think this is actual fleece.

*****

We next visited the town of Ksswick, home to the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, which is home to…..

Photo courtesy of Sarah Swinney

THIS!

Dead cat. Approximately 668 years old, found in the roof of a local church...

This place was out of control. They had tons of taxidermy…

Some which you could even pet…

Petting the fox...

*****

Our last stop was Castlerigg Stone Circle, a more or less unpoliced English Heritage site consisting of a prehistoric stone circle. People were climbing all over them, it was in the middle of a sheep field, and at one point some Japanese tourists grew tired of photographing the stones and eventually CORNERED one of the lambs, and it was kind of horrific. The poor thing kept trying to run past them to its herd, baaing the whole time.

Castlerigg stone circle with sheep in the background

People everywhere

So we saw quite a range of museums today. It is interesting how some English Heritage sites are administered. There was a man standing by the gate, but he did nothing to stop the tourists from climbing on the stones. I wonder what their policy on interaction with the monuments is. I will have to ask the man we are meeting at Hadrian’s Wall on Thursday.