Nearly Giving Up
We took a trip up to the Lake District in the kids spring half term of 2019. We’d enjoyed our trip up in 2016 and were ready for another go. In the meantime, I’d changed my employer twice, and the kids had grown quite a lot more.
This trip was characterised by two things, from my perspective. The weather was pretty rough all week. It rained a bit most days. Some days it rained a lot. And secondly, the accomodation we picked wasn’t great.
Travelling and Staying
We’d booked a cabin at Parkdean’s White Cross Bay place. This is (sort of) by the side of Windermere between Bowness and Ambleside. It should have been ideal, but it turned out to be quite poor.
Firstly the cabin we’d booked was nothing like as big as we thought. It was pokey, and to be honest I don’t think any of use wanted to spend a whole week in it. There were tears. So we went back to ask for an upgrade, and thankfully they had one.
Secondly, the communal area was very much of the “fun” variety – lots of screaming kids running around and very little sense of parental control. We ate lunch there on the day we arrived and I think the kids tried the pool on the second day, but then we didn’t go there again.
Thirdly, and very irritatingly from my point of view, was the quality of clientele. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a snob. I understand that there are lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds, and very few of them are like me. However, I drew the line when I came out of the laundry one afternoon to discover somebody had dumped several pieces of canine excrement and a number of hard (and scratchy) stones on the bonnet of my car. Why the hell would anyone think that was OK? And the resort clearly couldn’t help, because they don’t have CCTV.
The Holiday
We did a lot of things that are OK in the rain. We managed to get enough dry weather one day to walk over Loughrigg, and another (on the Friday) to climb Helvellyn. One day we rented canoes on Windermere and got freezing cold. Another afternoon we walked up to Stock Ghyll Force near Ambleside in the driving rain. And on yet another day we drove over to Go Ape at Grizedale. That was possibly the best day.
In summary though, whilst I love the Lake District and would go there for ever and a day, I hated the accomodation on this trip, and the weather was dubious at best.
Individual Posts
So here are all the individual posts for this trip, not that there are very many.
