Lists...

As my pals will tell you, I like a good list. Shopping lists, Things to do lists, Ta Da! Lists (those are like "To Do" lists only the opposite - you list the things you've already done so you can say "Ta Da!") Packing lists....if it came be written in list form, the chances are I will already have done so. One of my favourite lists though is one I first thought to write down at the end of 2011 - and is now a work in progress as we work through it:

Places to go and things to do...

1) The Lake District 
2) The Peak District
3) Go back to the Farne Islands to photograph the puffins again. 
4) Go back to Donna Nook to photograph the seals again
5) Go back to Dublin
6) Belfast
7) Spend more time exploring the bits of Cornwall we've not yet seen
8) Glastonbury - The tor and village, not the festival! 
8) Do a trip on the Settle to Carlisle railway in better weather!
9) Northumberland
10) Ardnamurchan Point
11) Dunnet Head (I've been there, Ben hasn't)
12) Lowestoft (Bizarrely Ben's never been there, either!) - We've both been to The Lizard already
13) Arran
14) Islay
15) Blackpool! (Yes, really, I've never been, but LOVE tacky seaside places!)
16) Anthony Gormley's Another Place - Crosby
17) Visit to the Red Arrows at RAF Scampton  
18) Orkney! 
19) Re-visit the National Railway Museum at York
20) Make a short visit to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
21) This one is for 2013 - get to an Airshow where the Vulcan is flying. Last chance to see her airborne.

Some of these have already been ticked off - the Lake district for example - we camped there over Easter 2012...

And the Farne Islands of course - fantastic place and we'll without question go back again...

...even though we did end up with just as many pictures of seals & Terns, as Puffins!

A month after that we found our way to Glastonbury village & Tor - a wonderful place which we loved. The weather could have been better though so that one might well get revisited!

A visit to RAF Scampton is not going to be on the cards now - it seems that they have decided that even though the Reds will remain housed there for the forseeable future, organised tours are not going to be reinstated. I did love my trip up to watch a practise though, and am planning more of the same!

On the subject of places we've been and loved - ORKNEY! Thanks to fabulous Fay a return trip is being planned there, too....same time next year probably!

Last but not least is the amazing Vulcan of course - although the urgency went out of this one to a degree when it was announced that they were hopeful of getting the funds in place to extend her flying time, we decided in any case we both wanted to see her so see her we would! In fact I've now had that pleasure twice - and she doesn't get any the less noisy!

I wonder how much more of our list we can get ticked off - or, come to that, how many more things we'll manage to add to it?!

Are you a list person? Maybe you have a traditional "Bucket list", or something a bit different. like us? I'd love to hear about your plans, anyway! (Nosy, that's me!)

Robyn

An Amble Round Ambleside...

...and other adventures.
At the start of this year I put together a list of 'places we want to see/visit' - some in the UK, some abroad. For the moment all fairly modest and easy to pull off - this is a serious list rather than a fantasy type thing, so no round the world cruises on there yet! Fairly high up on the UK locations was the Lake District - we pass round the edge of it on the M6 reasonably often, but hadn't been there since our honeymoon when we spent a day there visiting a friend. As our trip to the Hebrides is later this year, we decided to use the long weekend at Easter to make a trip up to Cumbria, then continuing on to Edinburgh afterwards to visit friends.
As ever with us, we decided to try to do the trip on a bit of a budget, so the car was loaded up with the tent and sleeping bags and a decent campsite hunted down just off the A66 for the first three nights. Slightly alarmingly the day before we headed off large parts of the area found themselves under a blanket of snow, much of which was still in evidence when we got there the next day!

Rather fabulously we arrived on site in brilliant sunshine to find we were the only people there - giving us the pick of the place, we chose a spot on the riverbank bordering one side of the site. A beautiful location - with fantastic views of the hills in the background....(please don't ask for details of the site by the way - due to their complete failure to enforce their own site rules regarding quiet times between 10am - 7am we won't be returning ourselves, or recommending to others - think loud noise from a group who pitched up after us until 2am and you'll get the picture. Shame as the site, facilities and location were superb).  Anyway, tent pitched up we headed off to explore - first stop Shap Abbey which proved to be fascinating - much wandering round looking at the plan of the building then trying to work out which room was where...


Shap Abbey



...an hour or do later we left with masses of photos and half a dozen eggs from the on-site hens via the honesty box. We usually try to buy eggs when we see them like that - they are usually cheaper than the supermarket and far fresher and tastier. We have two campsites we use regularly which both sell eggs from their own hens and it really is such a plus point! (and eggy bread as a camping breakfast just can't be beaten!)

From Shap we headed round to Ullswater - so beautiful! A nice tea shop with a garden was quickly identified and tea and cake consumed...well it would clearly have been rude not to!

Yum! Tea & Cake!

The following day dawned rather wetter and greyer. Undaunted though in spite of a poor nights sleep we jumped in the car and headed for Dalgarth in Eskdale - home of one end of the Ravenglass & Eskdale railway. To get there you are required to cross two of the Lake District's toughest passes - the Wrynose, which leads to the Hardnott. All the books warn you about these as being rather "challenging", let's say! I wasn't too worried, and as it turned out the roads were no worse than plenty I drive regularly in the Hebrides - single track, passing places at regular intervals, and if you leave the road be ready for a sheer drop! What we had forgotten, however, was that the clutch in our rather elderly (in miles, more than years - 153k and counting!) Citroen is well and truly at the end if it's life....just a short distance along the Wrynose pass I stopped in a passing place on a quite steep upward slope to allow oncoming traffic to continue, only to discover on trying to pull away again that I had NO drive whatsoever. Hmmm! The further we went, climbing all the way, the worse the situation became - when we found the parking spaces at the half way point I pulled in gratefully in a cloud of hot clutch fumes and we reluctantly agreed that to continue would be foolhardy in the extreme - potentially putting others as well as ourselves at risk. Turning round and retreating at least meant that we had mostly downhill stretches to do, so that was the decision. Sensible, but annoying.

View from the half way point on the Wrynose Pass

The following day we drove the short distance up the A66 to Penrith, leaving the car there for the day while we let the train take the strain! When we were on honeymoon one of the bits of train line that we travelled on was the line around the coast from Carlisle to Barrow-in-Furness, so the decision was to re-trace our steps getting off at Ravenglass to complete our plans of the day before. The Narrow Gauge railway runs from the coast inland to Dalgarth - a seven mile stretch through increasingly stunning countryside.

Ominous clouds looming overhead near Ravenglass

Many people use Dalgarth as a base for starting walks - we didn't have time for that this time round but did enjoy some spectacularly good ice cream! Back to Ravenglass and just time for a wander around the pretty village, and a beer in the pub before our train back to Penrith. Cheers!

Robyn


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