Windermere - Manchester 🇬🇧

Orrest Head 11kms 🚶‍♀️

After rain overnight, it started to clear this morning.  I dried out my tent draped over a fence while packing up and making brekky.  The campground kindly stored my bike and panniers for the day in their shed.

First stop to the Beatrix Potter Experience Museum.  An absolutely delightful time enjoying the immersive experience and remembering reading the books to my little sons and their delight and joy as we made the characters come alive.

I then set off to do the famous Orrest Head hike which was the first plotted hike in the Lakes District by Albert Wainwright who documented 214 fell hikes in the Lake District in his lifetime, and is honoured at the summit.  I followed the lake, bustling with tourists taking boat rides and up a long road past quaint shops, and houses made from local slate to the top road where the hike starts from.

It's a relatively cruisy hike following a winding path to the lookout with fabulous views of Lake Windermere.  Interestingly today there were airforce jets zooming over performing maneuvers for the DDay memorials.

I headed back down and as I met the road I spotted a woman who I thought I recognised from and Aussie/NZ cycle FB forum and so I called out her name and yes, it was Nicola.  I still had 5kms to go to collect my bike and then ride up the big hill to the railway station, and so she met me there for a half hour chat comparing Touring routes etc before I jumped onto the train to Manchester.

I cycled from the train station to my warm shower hosts who are kindly babysitting my bike while I fly to Cologne for some more training in the morning.  Cheap flights are often dodgy time of day and I need to be at the airport at 4.45am and so had dinner and a chat with them and now on the tram to the airport where I'll ‘sleep’ the night.

The Lakes District is so picturesque and I'd like to come back to do more hiking.