The Lake District is a lovely place to have a holiday. There is a beautiful view round nearly every corner; the walks are clearly marked, and a lot of them are relatively easy to complete. When I saw the Round Window (Bowness on Windermere) advertised by Cumbrian Cottages, it looked the perfect place for two people to have a break. Bowness is a busy little village with lots of pubs and restaurants which we certainly made the most of, either before or after we went for our walks.
I must admit that I cannot really be described as the rufty tufty outdoors type, but I do love the Lake District. I can well understand why writers and artists settle there. Personally I am not a great fan of Wordsworth ever since at the age of six I had to learn his sickly poem about daffodils. The sentence - I wandered lonely as a cloud - still makes me shudder. However Beatrix Potter is a real favourite so we caught the ferry across the lake and walked up to her house in Near Sawrey, which was actually further away than Far Sawrey. Hilltop is a very small National Trust property that takes an absolute maximum of twenty minutes to look round; and in fact the coach load of Japanese tourists took five minutes, so I think the charge of £10.50 per person is just a little bit steep. Beatrix Potter is big in Japan. It was very pleasant to see the village where Ginger and Pickles and Mrs Tiggywinkle lived, and of course, Mr McGregor's garden.
There were so many lovely walks around Windermere that we didn't need to go further than five miles from Bowness the whole week.
There are a couple of things you need to know though if you are thinking of hiring the Round Window for a romantic holiday. Firstly you need to bring plenty of 20p pieces as all the public toilets charge at least this amount. This charge is not at all popular as you can imagine. I was entertained for quite a few minutes by the graffiti commenting on it. Tourists and local people were united in their scorn of the South Lakes District Council, but were also upset by the lack of cleanliness; in fact one person had seen cleaner toilets in Leeds. The second thing is don't expect a great view out of the Round Window, unless you like car parks of course
It would be a bit churlish to end on a picture of a car park, so here some pictures much more representative of what the lakes mean to me.