The Lake District

What are men to rocks and mountains?

-Jane Austen

I apologize immediately for not posting in a while! It's been busy to say the least. However, I wanted to take a nap, but unfortunately "Moulin Rouge" is blasting downstairs in the kitchen. Oh joy.

I'm currently on my last real day of my vacation up in Keswick, Cumbria which is part of the Lake District. If you Google the Lake District I'm sure you'll find many beautiful pictures of the surrounding mountains and, of course, lakes, but rest assured that they are in no way equivalent to the real thing.

Our first full day up here was mainly to relax. We slept in and then in the afternoon went to Grasmere to visit Dove Cottage where William Wordsworth lived. It was a quaint town and I'd been there a few years ago. The weather, however, was atrocious. It was pouring non-stop and it even flooded the road we drove into town on, so that we had to take an alternate route home. It ended up being a nicer route in my opinion as it went right through the town I had visited when I was here with my parents.

Yesterday we went to a small church in town which was very pleasant. We then went on a ferry across one of the lakes and walked back to our cottage in town. Now, this seems like a jolly ol' time, except for those of you who know that hiking isn't high on my list of things I need to do. Add this to the fact that it wasn't a simple "Oh yay, let's walk around the lake" type of hike but a  "let's climb steep mossy mountain sides and step in mud bogs" type of hike. Luckily I had warm clothes and decent shoes. All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it, but I wasn't so enthusiastic that I was motivated to go on the more intense hike planned for today. ;)

Today was a very relaxing day, at least thus far. I slept in a bit and ate breakfast at the other cottage. (This would be a good time to point out that the trip I'm on was planned by the program as an optional pre-term break trip. As such, they planned almost everything and rented two cottages for the time we're here.) After, I went to a few places I had looked up in a guide book last night--The Pencil Museum and Fritz Park. I wanted to stop at the town museum as well as the Mining Museum, but both were unexpectedly closed.

Knowing that it is supposed to rain this afternoon, I planned on walking back to my cottage (and praying that someone was there to let me in). Yet I failed to remember the street the cottage was on and my GPS wasn't updated with the additional maps for Northern England (whoops!). Luckily, in my tourist moments I had picked up plenty of brochures with maps in them, and managed to find my way to a street I had remembered passing earlier in the day. By some miracle I managed to find my way home!

Tonight we're going to a pub for dinner and tomorrow we leave for Oxford! Hopefully I'll be getting a nap in soon, and Wednesday the madness begins! Tutorials start, as do college extracurriculars! I'm so excited!!

I'll post pictures soon, and hopefully have more blogs about my recent trips, particularly my adventures in Bath!

Cheers!