Weekend in the Lake District

The Lake District

a weekend of sunshine, beauty, and fun

Castlerigg Stone Circle

the most glorious picnic spot

360 degrees of mountains, blue sky, bleating sheep

and a 5,000 year old stone circle

Keswick

Keswick has a pencil museum so of course we had to go!

we saw the world's largest pencil and learned about pencils that held secret maps and compasses in WW2

 (this isn't the largest pencil - the record holder is actually a colored pencil...yellow if you're curious)

Look - a Lake!

Buttermere

creamy, not too sweet fresh ice cream in the hamlet of Buttermere

(a well deserved treat after the perilous drive to get here!)

Lake Buttermere

the view if you turned your back to the lake

Grasmere

we toured Wordsworth's house - Dove Cottage

fresh baked gingerbread from a teeny tiny shop next door to an ancient church

Cartmel

we came here specially for the sticky toffee pudding - definitely the best we've had to date

 (haha - I made an unintended joke as sticky toffee pudding is often made with dates)

Lakes Aquarium at the bottom of Lake Windermere

 these fish cracked me up - they're hiding!

Isaac had a bathtub picnic dinner of tomato pasta salad...

and then he had a bath!

Hill Top Farm near Hawkshead

this is Beatrix Potter's cottage - lush green gardens...

you could picture naughty Peter Rabbit hopping in front of you at any moment

Wray Castle

this mock-gothic "castle" was actually built in the 1840s by James and Margaret Dawson to be their retirement home!



Ambleside

we stopped here for a delightful lunch before our drive back home

a sweet ending to a wonderful get-away weekend

(we ended up bringing some of those fruit studded buns home for breakfast the next day -

soo yummy!)