This trip was slightly spontaneous so we had to spend a bit much for the transportation and accommodation. Also, this was the time when most areas in the north are in Tier 3. That’s one of our worries but fortunately, Cumbria was still at Tier 2. As one of the staff in the restaurant we’ve been in said, people just come visit anyway and if they do test positive, that statistic will register in his/her local place.
Transportation: We booked a train from London Euston to Windermere for £120 each, return. It’s about 3-4 hours of travel.
Accommodation: We stayed at Oakfold House in Bowness-on-Windermere. We booked 2 double bedrooms (4 of us), £108 per head. No breakfast is included, however, they serve breakfast for £9 or £15 for two days. The owners were lovely, a wife and husband duo who personally runs the place. It’s a good location being just a short walk from the station, a short walk to the river and shops and restaurants surrounding it, and the Beatrix Potter attraction. Also, just off the road is the bus stop going to Aira Force, if that’s one of your itineraries.
As a companion to this post watch Marg’s vlog about our whole trip.
Day 1: Windermere Lake Cruise
You have different options for this tour, the red, the yellow, and the blue cruise. For details of the tours including the route of these tours, time allocation, and price, go to their official website. This is also where you will book the tour since everything is done online now. Price ranges from £9.50 to £13.
We chose the Yellow Cruise which starts from Bowness to Lakeside (or vice versa), round trip, total travel time is 90 minutes. You select the times though and for us we just stayed in Lakeside for an hour. At Lakeside, there’s the Lakes Aquarium and the Lakeside and Haverwaithe Railway
This is pretty much our day one. We just had dinner, did a bit of shopping, and settled in our beds in preparation for the next day.
Day 2: Penrith (Aira Force Waterfalls and Gowbarrow Fell)
We planned to start the day early but the first bus from our place comes at 9-ish I think (sorry, I’m just recalling now) so we just had our breakfast at the B&B.
For our transportation, I downloaded the Stagecoach app and purchased the North West Explorer Group for £32.70, unlimited travel for the whole day until 04:00 the next day. This is for maximum of 4 travelers. It’s £11.50 per person, so we saved with this one. I already forgot the bus but it’s 500 something. I tried to trace through the Stagecoach app again but it’s giving me 3 hours travel time with 2-3 bus changes. What I remembered is we only took one bus from Beresford Road straight to Aira Force and it’s definitely less than 3 hours, probably just an hour and a half.
Aira Force has its own bus stop in case you also worried like us when we lost our internet connection and we didn’t know where to alight. Actually, I’ve downloaded an offline map just in case. From the bus stop, we had a short walk before arriving at a car park. From there, the main waterfall was a short distance away.
We didn’t know exactly the way to Gowbarrow Fell so we just followed the stream of water because as we saw on the map, it is somewhere at the end of the stream. Also, we’re meeting people every now and then so we thought we must be heading the right way.
And indeed we are!
It was thankfully sunny when we were hiking up the slopes of Gowbarrow but it rained before that so the paths were muddy and slippery. Again, me the lamest of them all. I hang on to the tall leaves, fences, stones, whatever I can grab on.
We didn’t go back to the waterfalls and instead took the main road via Dockray.
Third day, we just had breakfast and into our respective trains.
Some would say that Lake District is perfect in summer or spring but for me, an autumn in this place is the best. It definitely cured my itch to have a photo with the reds of autumn. Also the struggle of hiking in muddy soil.