We left the Cotswolds and headed north toward England’s Lake District. The rolling bright green countryside gave way to the immense pastel purple and gray Cumbria mountains rising up along either side of the car as we wound our way through to Keswick (that’s KEZZ-ick).
We’d planned to use our two-night stay in Keswick as a jumping off point to drive to Hadrian’s wall and other nearby attractions in the Lake District, but once we drove into the quaint historic town with its pedestrian-only Main Street and checked into our beautiful and cozy room at Parkfield Guest House, we decided simply to park the car for a couple of days and explore only what we could on foot.
We carried our bags up the floral-carpeted stairs to the third floor of the old Victorian house. Our room was decorated in calming cream colors with textured floral wallpaper, a gold and glass chandelier, and windows overlooking green grass and the mountains in the distance.
The proprietor invited us to relax with some biscuits and a pot of tea in the sitting room. As our first order of business for “Operation: Be Still,” we sat for over an hour, getting fully into tea time and enjoying the sweet quiet in the bright front room. After we had thoroughly decompressed, we went for a leisurely stroll along the edge of Hope Park, turned around and headed back downtown, and scoped out a place to have dinner.
[reading the guidebook]
Thayer: There’s a place called The Dog and Gun, where you can bring your dog into the pub.
Hayl: Oh my God, we have to go there.
Thayer: Yes, we do.
Hayl: Won’t you just die?
Thayer: Yes, I will. I am already dying.
Of course we went there, and we ate delicious curry while watching the pups come and go, learning that the British are quite keen on bringing their furry friends along on weekend getaways.
We made it an early night and returned to the Parkfield to climb into bed and watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, a reality TV show about Irish travelers that we’d just been talking about with Kirsty the night before—a happy coincidence.
The next morning we had “the full English” in the breakfast room and then headed out for a three-hour walk around Derwent Water, the lake in Keswick, using a twelve-years outdated walking guidebook provided by the Parkfield. It seemed many more signs were posted back in 2000 when the book was published than were there now; the story of our traveling lives.
The terrain was serene and pastel and quite like a Thomas Kinkade painting. I know it’s not cool to love Thomas Kinkade the way I do, but there’s nothing to be done about it. The ridiculously sweet pastoral images he creates are real, and they’re over here in England; I knew it.
Soon we came across a pair of swans who approached us as we passed. Isn’t that sweet, we thought. Such pretty, friendly swans, we thought. I’d never been so close to a swan, so I took a few steps closer until the nearer swan opened its beak and hissed at me. Hissed, like a cat. You might not think a hissing bird would be intimidating, but you would be mistaken. These birds are about three times the size of your average cat, and this one had a deadly serious look in his eyes. Just to prove how tough he was, he started gnawing a hunk of green moss, lest I doubt his ability to gnaw me too. He won; we decided to be the bigger birds and walk away.
After the run-in with the swans, it’s hard to say what compelled me to run flailing into a flock of large geese, but when we saw them all grazing on the top of a lush green hill, I just couldn’t resist. I’d thought it would make such a dramatic video: running right into the flock while they all took off and flew away. Thayer got the camera ready and I started the run up the hill. Closer and closer I came, suspense heightening, excitement bubbling as I watched for the first signs of disturbance that would signal their impending flight.
I was mid-flock when I finally gave it up. These geese could not have cared less about my presence, avoiding me with only mild annoyance, their bodies waddling like supersized footballs on legs. At least Thayer and I could amuse ourselves by continuing to try to ruffle their feathers by following them. Still no amount of chasing would make a single one of them take flight. We were no longer the bigger birds. We were the dodos.
We headed downtown to lunch at The Old Keswickian, where there were no more birds and thus no more bird puns for me to foist upon you. We spent the rest of the afternoon hitting the shops and having coffee, eventually supping at Oddfellows Arms and returning to the Parkfield.
Back in our room we fortuitously found a BBC program all about British Royalty, which we have been reading about and piecing together for days, our brains straining to remember who was who of Henry VIII’s children, and who usurped who and who killed who and so on. There was a fair amount of nerdy excitement in our room as we sat in bed and watched the program, riveted, for hours.
Early next morning we had our last breakfast in England and made a run for the border. The Scottish border, that is.
Until next time!
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