14 August 2010: Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin

No walks arranged for our last day today, instead we visited the homes of two of The Lakes' most famous ancestors. Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm wasn't at all what I expected location wise as I expected it to stand alone on a hill but instead it was surrounded by other small houses and cottages. It was lovely inside though and full of her personal belongings and nik naks as well as some of her "grown up" landscape paintings of her beloved Lakes. The house was quite a good size too much larger than Dove Cottage just down the road.

John Ruskin was also a famous poet and painter, a man before his time who had aspirations for humanity that he was unable to see in his own lifetime, like state education for everyone and the NHS. His home Brantwood sits on the lakeside overlooking Conniston Water and is truly beautiful both inside and out. Saboohi fell in love with it and would move in tomorrow if she could. Today the weather was warm and sunny and the lake was glistening, looking its best. A perfect final view to take away with us as we headed off on our 6 hour drive home. We will be back.

13 August 2010: Conniston and The Tarns

Our walk today took us on a 7 mile circular route above Lake Conniston and over to Tarn Hows and The Tarns another fantastic offering from our 1001 British Walks folder! The weather was kind today and the scenery really gorgeous - the picture here is of our view looking down over Conniston. Our walk took us across lush green meadows, up steep but deserted country lanes, on rocky paths tracking fast flowing becks and waterfalls and circumnavigating still and clear tarns. Saboohi decided to take an impromptu dip in Yew Tree Tarn (mad woman) she said it was cool and very refreshing after the 5 hour walk but I wasn't tempted! Maybe another day.

12 August 2010: A wet day in The Lakes

At last a few days away in the beautiful Lake District for Saboohi, Lilia and myself. We rented a National Trust property, an appartment called Bank Wood in the west wing of the old sandstone Acorn House (see photo). This is NT at its best, they have renovated the wings of this building to provide income from 4 appartments so that they can eventually repair the rest of the house. We were very pleased to be donating to such a good cause! We visited Dove Cottage today the simple and small home of the great poet William Wordsworth. Apparantly 14 people lived in this tiny cottage at one stage during his ownership, they must have been sleeping in shifts. We also learnt the origin of the saying "daylight robbery" here, a phrase that was coined when they introduced a tax on glass windows and people had to brick them up to save themselves money!

We set off on one of our 1001 walks of Britain today, starting at Pooley Bridge and then up and over the moors around Ullswater. RAF jets were flying low above us throughout the walk and the famous Lake District rain soaked us to the skin. Lilia had a ball! After the walk we called in to watch the Rydal Sheep dog and Hound trials, it was wet and muddy but it was placed in the most gloriously green valley,such a pretty spot. The highlight of our visit was a hound race called the "dog dash". A pack of hounds following a aniseed scented trail around the lakeland hills ad the first hound back to the valley won. The noise was terrific, from owners as well as the hounds, such excitement and with such a stunning backdrop it was the highlight of my day.

25 December 2009: Christmas with the family

An early start this Christmas morning as we set off from Mum and Dad's house to drive up to Solihull. Due to the snow and problems on the railways, Mum and Dad had not been able to get up to Bryan's house on 23 Dec as originally planned and the snow in Solihull had prevented Bryan from coming down to pick them up by car. Today however was bright and dry and the roads relatively empty as we drove up to the midlands.

It was a typical family Christmas. All the girls were at home and after devouring a big Christmas lunch we spent the rest of the day opening presents and playing games. This year's main present in the Pugh household was the Wii and Saboohi and I had bought the family Wii Fit to accompany it. The Wii is THE gadget at the moment as couch potatoes all over the country get onto their feet and start jogging, bowling, skiing, skating etc We particularly enjoyed the ten pin bowling today and Mum and Dad both got involved and infact did very well! As Dad has not been very well recently and has been shakey on his feet, it was nice to see him up and participating in our Wii tournament.

The evening was filled with the more traditional family games, devided by our games master Bryan. "Play your cards right", Trivial Pursuit (on the Wii!)and "Call my bluff" they got the Bryan Pugh treatment and kept us all entertained until the late hours. And the cherry on the cake of course was that we had snow on the ground today! I can't remember the last time we had a White Christmas but we had one this year.

Sunday 20 December 2009

The snow is deep and crisp but not very even under foot today as we set out to walk around Leith Hill in the Surrey Hills. It was several inches deep in places and the ponds we passed were completely frozen over. It was a magical walk. The landscape reminded me of Narnia from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and I expected Mr Tumnus to appear from behind the trees at any moment! For lunch we stopped at the Stephen Langton Public House in Friday Street. A roaring fire, a glass of Drambuie and delicious pub fare replenished and refortified us before we headed off to complete our walk. The views from Leith Hill at the end of our 5 mile walk were stunning -how lucky are we to live in such a beautiful place?

Sunday 29 November 2009: Last Day in Iceland

We awoke to thick snow this morning and a windy, cold blizzard outside. We took the free hotel shuttle bus into Reykjavik at 09.30 after another hearty breakfast and it was still dark as we ventured out into the snowy deserted streets of the city. Well if I lived here and it was this dark and cold on a Sunday morning I would still be in bed too!
We walked up towards the Lutheran Church (Hallegrimskirkja Church), which sits on higher ground in the middle of the old town and has a bell tower that is the highest point in the city. The Christmas lights were still on in the streets and everywhere looked so pretty (see photo). The Church is modern and quite plain inside but still really beautiful. It was built during the last century and in 1992 a church organ with 5275 pipes and 72 stops was inaugurated. It is a magnificent organ and we were lucky enough to be there when the organist (Hordur Askelsson) was practicing for the service later that morning. The tone was so rich and crisp; we couldn’t help but sit and listen for a while.
Then we paid a small fee and took the elevator up into the bell tower where we had unrivalled views out across the city. It was bitterly cold up there but the views were well worth the pain! After leaving the church we went in search of a hot coffee to warm us and we stopped at Café Paris in the centre of town. Before leaving to head back to the hotel and the airport we walked to The National Museum of Iceland to find out a little about the island’s history. A very modern, well planned out museum, we only had an hour to spend there so we were grateful that it wasn’t too big! The one thing I learnt from the visit was that Iceland is an ancient, peace loving community that has slowly and diplomatically won it’s independence from the rule of Denmark without any major skirmishes. It has been a hard existence making a living in the barren, remote lands here but they have endured and won. It is certainly a very welcoming and accommodating place to visit and I feel sure we will be back at some stage –maybe in the summer next time.

Saturday 28 November 2009: Day Two in Iceland

We awoke to another snowy (dark) morning in Reykjavik. Today we had a full day’s excursion planned called “The Golden Circle” tour, which took us to 4 key places on the tourist route. The first was a power plant! Usually a power plant would not be a tourist attraction but here in Iceland the hot water and heating system are powered by the earth’s natural resources as the country lies across 2 tectonic plates and can therefore use bore holes to access the extreme heat from the earths core. Well that’s enough of the science!
We drove for another hour to reach our next stop, which was the awesome natural spectacle of the Gull Foss waterfall. The terrain here is very barren, there are few houses, very few trees (because of the weak soil structure and strong winds) and no wildlife to speak of either although that is probably due to the fact it is winter-time, there is hardly any daylight and it is cold. It is so quiet.
After Gull Foss we had a short drive over to see “Geysir”, in fact THE Geysir that gave all the others around the world their name. There was ice on the ground and yet around us there were bubbling, boiling pools of water and the biggest of these was GEYSIR. Every 5 minutes Geysir blew gallons of boiling hot steam and water about 50 feet into the air –he was magnificent! For lunch we went to a restaurant across the road from Geysir that was offering a “eat as much as want” buffet. The food was excellent. I ate Cauliflower soup for the first time, which impressed Saboohi, and we had an array of raw fish, meats, breads, sweets etc. Etc it was all delicious.
Our final stop as we drove back towards Reykjavik was called Pingvellir . This is a historic site, which has been the cradle of civilisation in Iceland since about 900 A.D. It is the place where tribes would meet to discuss and agree the laws of the land – believed to be the site of the world’s first Parliament. It is also a place where the 2 tectonic plates meet and movement over the years has left gorges carved into the landscape. It is dramatic, stark, motionless and beautiful.
Another memorable day!