Looking Out The Window

The 'must see' place in England seems to be 'The Lake District'. Everyone is always telling us how lovely it is and that we must go there. It's over 4 hours drive from our place so we haven't been able to just go there on a day trip, but when we decided to spend a week travelling north, The Lake District was first on the list of places to go.

After our short stop in Preston we were back on the road and heading to Cumbria, and from here the views really did just keep getting better and better!

They may not look that exciting to all you people living in beautiful, mountain filled Tasmania - but seriously, most of England is so flat and seeing these hills (mountains to the Brits) was a glorious sight!!!

No matter how many rock walls I see, they amaze me everytime! I can't help but imagine someone standing there building them and I think about how much hard work it must have been. The paddocks are just lined with them.

We were heading to a B&B in Eskdale which is West of the more common Lake District Towns. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere at times, but it was a pretty good looking nowhere!

It was a beautiful evening, and such an interesting drive - kinda scary at times though - going up these tiny roads, no knowing what's around the corner.

There were a few times that we wondered where the hell we were going.... surrounded by wild sheep, no one else to be seen.....

... apart from the odd MG!! (actually not really sure what kinda cool car this is... but it looks a little like an MG so we will call it that!!)

Eventually, we reached our B&B! Eskdale is a tiny town and was so peaceful. This was our rooms view.... quite refreshing really!

We headed up to the pub for tea, and the kids had a great time on the playground! I think they were just glad to be out of the car at this stage!!! Couldn't stay long into the night though, because even though it stays light here until about 10pm-ish the Midgies start coming out (little flea-like things that bite)!

Lani made herself a cuppa in the morning...

which she needed because it was good bye beautiful weather and hello rain!

Actually, it was pouring.... not raining, so our full day planned in The Lakes kinda got ruined! But there were still some great sights and our drive to Hawkshead proved to be very entertaining!

We decided to take the road over Honister Pass from Eskdale to Ambleside, even though we were warned that going the shortest way isn't really the quickest way and that this part of road is the most 'dodgy' in all of England. (The guy even tried to tell us that there is nothing like this road in the whole of Australia.... and that I may have to sit in the back with the kids!)

We weren't really sure whether we should give it a go or not, but all this talk made me wanna take the challenge!

We really wished we were in the Subaru, and would have felt a lot safer if we were, because our dodgy Peugeot doesn't have the best brakes, or much power!

The road turned out to be not so bad... but a little stressful for the driver at times! Think Proctors road with no safety rails, twice as steep only 1/2 the width with cars wanting to go up and down!! This road took us over the steepest passes in England, but I don't think he was right when he said 'there is nothing like it in Australia'!

We reached our destination and it was still raining quite hard... but we did what we could!

Every country has at least one Southport

Tuesday morning we headed north along the coastline to Southport. We thought we would have a quick look around here before moving on.... but our quick stop turned into at least 3 hours!! It was a gorgeous sunny day - too good to be in a car and Southport has a great esplanade so we spent the best part of the day here!

Couldn't resist going for a walk along the mile long pier, it was just beautiful. This pier is the second longest pier in Britain and recently won the 'Pier of the year' award. It is also the oldest pier and has been here since 1860! (Had a few upgrades though!) A tram runs along the pier and so does a little yellow train but we were having too much fun walking!

You would think after walking a mile you would be looking out into the ocean, but we were still a fair way back!

Check out the beach!! These first few photos were taken about a 1/4 of the way along...

This is as far as cars are allowed (below), and yes some people were walking all the way out with beach gear in hand from here, and yes others just parked their car... unloaded and started playing on the beach!!! We didn't actually go down onto the beach because you couldn't get down there from the pier, but the sand didn't really look like playing quality and was quite wet. (I presume with High Tide the water comes all the way in.) That's a lot of beach!!

We have lots of photos like this... especially when you are on the motor ways, we see heaps of planes over head and most of them are making 'plane clouds' as we call them! They do look cool, especially when their paths cross.

This is at the end of the pier, in the background you can see just how far away we still are from the oceans edge!

The girls had so much fun with these little windmills things.

The view walking back to the promenade and Ocean Plaza. Lots of entertainment happening here - live singing, a bit of dancing and people sitting around enjoying the sunshine.

Not there yet though...

The tram passes for about the 5th time!

Finally back to the entertainment hot spot.... where the young and old ride on the carousel... walking stick and all!! (sorry it's a little blurry!) But too funny to leave out - great to see isn't it!

One more bit of boardwalk over Marine Lake and we are back in the city center heading for the car!

We hadn't been traveling long when we hear.... 'I gotta do poos!' So we head for the nearest town, which turned out to be this stunning little country village, which I can't even remember the name off... but it was just picturesque!