MM3

Here’s another aside. Because the Lake District is do beautiful, it inevitably attract heaps of tourists. No problem with that in and of itself, but over time it tends to cheapen the experience. To give an example, two of the bigger towns on Lake Windermere, Bowness and Ambleside, are awash with franchised cafes and restaurants. They cater for the hoards that arrive on coaches, take the ferry ride and scurry back to their hotels. They have a lot of fun, I’m sure. As a result of this market, it seems that the old family-run venture has given way to the fast-food chains. It seems a pity, but it seems to work.

Easdale Tarn and Grasmere

Plans for today: Visit Sizergh Castle and Allenbank in Grasmere. That would be great because our Australian National Trust memberships would get us in for free. Guess what! Closed. What to do? DJ suggested a walk up to the Easdale Tarn. It’s near Allenbank (see above) and we walked past it on our way to the tarn.

 

And what a tarn it was! Pretty much what you’d expect of a tarn – rocky lake with cold wind and a little island somewhere offshore. We munched into the two scones we’d bought yesterday on a little knoll overlooking said tarn. Delicious! 

There happened to be one other creature that shared our desire to munch into scones and jam and that was an overly aggressive duck. Never have I seen such aggression in a duck. “Piss off, duck!”, I felt compelled to screech. Never before have I been as ‘quacked at’ as today. Ferocious. Only a kick-out and a slap dissuaded the duck from continuing its scone-snatching endeavours. Said duck eventually gave up on us and flew off to engage with other tarn-walkers. GOOD LUCK, DUCK! [I don’t think that duck showed the respect due to such an one as I, given my far superior ranking in the food chain].

 

And so on down the hill to Grasmere, yet another gorgeous village in the Lake District. Cute AS!