Day 2 - Ambleside

Distance Walked: 7.9km, G&Ts: 1 (Lakes Distillery - Harmless)

This morning I had my first "Full English" breakfast of my holiday.  Although I think a more accurate description is "Moderately Complete" (see photo).  In addition, there was no marmelade for the toast and, crime of crimes, the coffee was instant!

Still, I didn't do any hiking today so I suppose I didn't need more food.

Today was spent getting to Ambleside.  My hiking adventures start tomorrow.  The journey was in a series of increasingly less comfortable trains, followed by a long taxi ride.  The first train was a quite comfortable high-speed train where I'd reserved a carefully chosen seat.  However, at the last minute they'd replaced the train with one with a different number of cars and all the reservations were voided.  When boarding was announced there was a mad stampede for the train.  We needed have bothered as only about 1/4 of the seats were taken.

On the second train, I shared a car with a group of women who had been at a hen's do the night before and were still very vocally and cheerfully drunk.  The ticket inspector was a young man, who they teased mercilessly.  I found this part of the journey quite entertaining.  I suspect poor Geoffrey didn't.  The third train had a seat pitch that made Jetstar look spacious.  Finally I spent an hour in a taxi making conversation with the driver, who was friendly and chatty but totally devoid of a sense of humor.  Today was a long journey.

Ambleside is a pretty little town on the shores of Lake Windermere.  It is a maze of narrow streets, climbing up and down.  There is a stream running through the town into the lake.  For some reason, somebody built the tiniest house on a tiny bridge across this stream.  It is cute but why?  It is only two rooms - one on top of the other.

The town is heaving with tourists.  Half the time you have to walk in the street as the footpath is too crowded.  Every second shop sells outdoor gear.  The ones in between are cafes and restaurants.  There are also lots and lots of dogs.  In the street, in the hotels, in the pubs and in the restaurants.  There were four different sets of dogs in the restaurant where I had dinner tonight.  A pair of terriers, a German shepherd puppy, a full-grown boxer and a full sized poodle.  I wonder how many food safety standards they were breaching.

Dinner tonight was at Sheila's Cottage and was merely Harmless.  I started with something called a Westmoreland ramequin which was mushrooms in a cream & brandy sauce topped with melted cheese.  The mushrooms were tasty enough but it came with a salad with a questionable dressing.  It had coarsely ground pepper in it which kept making me wonder if they hadn't washed the salad leaves properly.  Main was a steak and kidney pudding.  I was expecting this to have a lovely crisp suet crush pastry but I got this.   

The flabby thing on top is the pudding.  It is sitting on a huge puck of mashed potato in a lake of gravy.  The gravy and the pudding filling were tasty but the mash needed more butter and/or cream.  The less said about the pastry the better.  For dessert I had the creme brulee.   It looked delicious initially but when I broke the crust the custard was a strange greenish-black colour.  It turns out it was coffee flavoured.  It was delicious but that colour was all wrong.

Early today I went shopping for trail mix and the like to take with me on my hikes when I came across these chips.  I had to buy them.  God only knows what they'll taste like.

Wish me luck for the weather tomorrow.  They are predicting clouds in the morning and a 50% chance of rain the afternoon.  This means it will be cloudy with poor visibility too.  Fun times.