Grasmere – September 10th 2020

After gazing wistfully across Morecambe Bay at The Lake District for 6 months, I finally got a chance to visit again today.

It was fitting that I was driving to Grasmere so soon after getting my licence, since the reason that I applied for a provisional licence in the first place was because I wanted to visit there one day the spring before last, but couldn’t due to the limited public transport in that bit of The Lakes.

Despite normally being quite quiet during the week, the main carpark was completely full and an overflow carpark had been set up in the sports field behind it.

Unfortunately, many of our fellow visitors weren’t concerned abut social distancing, so walking through the village was rather akin to an assault course.

The initial plan was to walk along the main road out of town and down to the lake side, but a little way down the road, we came across a footpath leading up into the hills which we’ve always just walked by in the past.

 

I kept my camera at the ready after another hiker gave me the heads up that there were red squirrels in the woods going up the hill, but didn’t have any more success than the last time and had to content myself with some of the more run-of-the-mill flora and fauna.

The path led up the hill almost parallel to the one down by the lake that we normally walk along, eventually ending up at a clearing in the woods which overlooked the lake.

From there, the main path looped back around towards the main road, although there was sign for Great Langdale by nearby gate, so I may well come back up there to check that walk out.

 

A little way back along the road, we came across a cottage which had a public footpath running through the garden and decided to follow that to see where it went.

As it turns out, the footpath led to the point where we would normally turn around on the lake side walk, so we walked back that way.

Before heading off home, we parked up in Boweness and went for another short walk around Lake Windermere.