Day 5 – Travel to North Lakes District

We hopped back on the train for a four hour ride from Oxford to Penrith, in the North Lakes District. Two people made us want to go there: Rick Steves and Beth Daniels. Rick is our favorite European travel writer (of PBS fame) and Beth is our friend from church and Pat's knitting group. When we told her we were going to England she shared with us a book she had from many years ago, hikes and walks in the North Lakes District. It was a small, hand-written and hand-illustrated book that we thought reflected a simple time and place. I'm happy to report that once we got there, it was like stepping back in time and it probably wasn't much different from how Beth saw it.

But...moving back, we had to get from Penrith to Keswick along Derwent Water (the lake) so we rented a car. Driving on the left is SO MUCH FUN and a SIMPLE thing to do...HAH!...but really, don't try this at home! We managed to navigate to Keswick thanks to good luck and Bif's GPS (thanks for that) and found our B&B very easily. Linda (proprietor) met us and welcomed us with more information about the area and its walks than we could possibly absorb. We finished the evening with a quick, rain-soaked walk to see the Castlerigg Stone Circle, one of Britain's oldest and we had it almost completely to ourselves. Then we came back into town, ate a quick pizza (nice – even with a British sausage on it) then called it a night.