Long Weekend: York (of smells and LEGO sculptures)

We saw the York Minster Cathedral several times on this trip, but didn't make it inside.

We're approaching the end of our planned secondment.  We've been fortunate to get most of the major locations we wanted to visit, as well as a couple that weren't on our radar.  I'm squirreling vacation days away now for a couple more big trips plus relocation time.  Kristine and the girls have gotten into a routine of meeting with friends from school or church during breaks.  This preserves everyone's sanity during a week-long half-term break (case in point, the precursor to this blog post's trip included local excursions to Calke Abbey and Rosliston Forestry Center).

Despite my stinginess about vacation time, we decided to do a long weekend trip during the February break.  Since coming over here, many people have told us we need to visit Yorkshire.  I originally wanted to do a countryside excursion like our Wales and Cumbria trips.  However, consensus from willing advisors was that we should go to York proper.  After some discussion, an added condition from Kristine to visit Durham Cathedral (more on that later), and a lovely flat found through ownersdirect, off we went.

We made the 100 mile drive from Melbourne on Friday morning.  It was on the M1, past Nottingham, and uneventful with no traffic jams.  Yes - I used all those terms in the same sentence.

Our flat was right around the corner from Botham Gate - one of the gates for the York wall.  Elise lost no time finding a window in which to curl up.  Like the pictures of the girls running, this is becoming a standard one for our trips.  Usually the picture involves Elise and a book.  This time, much to Kristine's delight, it involved Elise knitting.

  

The York Minster Cathedral was about as far on the other side of Botham Gate as our flat.  We made it as far as the outside.   I have it on good authority that the Minster is truly impressive.  However, this trip had Durham on the mind.

Our main agenda item Friday afternoon was visiting York's Chocolate Story.  It's a little museum / shop / tour that has only been open for 3 or 4 years.  I wouldn't have known to look for it, except one of my colleagues said "You're going to York?  You've got to visit the Chocolate Story."  He was right.  He didn't tell me about the pigeons outside the building.  Charis and Clare, remembering our trip to Germany, took advantage of the time before the tour started to chase every pigeon in the area.  Sorry, pigeons.

People told us about York's significance as the former capital of England, later the center of Viking power in England, and for architectural features like the Minster and the Wall.  I had not realized it's importance in the chocolate industry.  Yes, I have eaten countless York peppermint patties from grocery stores in the US and the UK.  No, I never made the connection.  It turns out there was a network of Quaker families who all got into the chocolate business during the mid-1800s (Frye in Bristol, Cadbury in Birmingham, Rowntree and Terry in York).  The Quaker prohibition against taking oaths prevented careers in government, law, or medicine (I didn't know this).  The prohibition against armed conflict prevented careers in the military (I did know this).  Given limited career options, these families were all in the grocery / confectionary business.  At the time, chocolate was a popular hot drink for the upper classes.  Frye's innovation was figuring out how to make solid chocolate.  These families shared ideas that developed solid chocolate further, and distributed it through their grocery stores.  Presto - chocolate became available in previously unimaginable form and scale.  

The tour was a well-done mix of guide, audio-visual, and tactile (mostly tasting) information about the role of chocolate in government control (Aztec rulers publicly consumed large quantities of their chocolate drink during important festivals), political espionage (the Spanish court tried to keep the recipe a secret after Cortez brought it back with him from Mexico, but it spread through Europe after a member of court sold it to the Italians), urban renewal (Rowntree and others invested heavily in improving living conditions in the slums of York on behalf of their workers), medical employment (specific tasks in the chocolate factories gave lots of work to the company dentists), and women in business (jobs in the factory gave young mothers rare opportunities to get out of the house and socialize in the evenings; the wives in the founding families helped their husbands run the factories and in some cases bucked stereotypes by running the factory themselves).  I also enjoyed hearing about the role of mistakes in the development of modern chocolate.  For example, Nestle evidently left the machine that stirred his melted chocolate turned on for a weekend.  He came back and found the consistency to be much more to his liking after the three days of mixing (previously everyone mixed for just a few hours).  Which got us the smooth texture in today's milk chocolate.

I enjoyed the informational part of the tour.  The girls put up with it peacefully.  They got more interested when the guide explained that real chocolate must be experienced with all 5 senses.  Interest became excitement when he said he was going to demonstrate, and that we would all participate.  He brought a platter around and let us each take a piece (only one, unfortunately).  Here's what he meant.

Touch - hold the chocolate on the back of your hand and savor the cool feeling.

Sight - look at the chocolate while it's on the back of your hand.  Enjoy the sight, instead of just snarfing it down as soon as you get it.

Smell - despite limited ability to smell, which is legendary in our family, I was detecting aromas by this point in the tour.

Sound - crack the chocolate.  It's not good if you don't hear a nice "Snap!"

Taste - goes without saying.  Unless one pointed out that unlike American chocolate (ahem, Hershey), it actually has taste.

The last activity on the tour was an interactive five stations that walked you through the chocolate making process.  You physically moved something (a wheel for whisking cacao bean husks, levers to mix milk and sugar or pour chocolate into the mold to set).  The friendly computer at each station chastised you if you did too much or too little, and congratulated you on being a bona fide chocolate maker if you did it just right.  5 stations, 5 volunteers staffed by 3 Collins girls.

For the final bit, everyone got a large blob of liquid chocolate poured onto a lolly (popsicle, for the Americans) stick on a tray, which they then got to decorate.  Decoration complete, the lolly went into the fridge to harden.  While we waited, we got to sample some of the high end chocolate they were making, look at displays about the chocolate industry around the world and watch a few chocolate adverts through the years (including watching some pretty clever commercials).  I might not have mentioned we got to sample the high end chocolate.  In unlimited quantities.

Some people in our family found this display amusing.  Others didn't.

Tour complete, we walked back to the flat, grabbed dinner, and savored our lollies.  4 of us savored our lollies, anyway.  For some inexplicable reason, a certain father had declined a spot at the lolly-making line because he thought he might need to help one or two daughters with theirs.  He thought wrongly, as said daughters very capably decorated their lollies with very limited oversight.  Sad father was reduced to begging and cajoling bites of chocolate lollies from the rest of his family.  Some daughters were sympathetic and gracious.  One daughter was not.  One mommy was even less so.

The Chocolate Story was engaging for everyone in the family.  It was interactive, the numbers in the tour group were kept small, and best of it all it had to do with chocolate. Perhaps it's unfortunate that we made it our first stop.  In hindsight, that was a tough one to top.  Here are the things we tried that just couldn't measure up.

We went to the Jorvik museum of Viking heritage in York.  I gather from folks I've talked with that it's kind of an obligatory thing to do.  I'm used to museums being in large open spaces - especially where archaeology is involved.  Not so with Jorvik.  The museum and dig are in a building not far from the middle of the city.  Of particular interest, it extends several stories down into the ground.  Very creative.  Unfortunately, the Saturday that we visited was the first day of the school half term break in York.  The place was packed.  Many of the displays had informative content about Vikings in York.  They were static displays, where you had to stand and read a plaque next to a case on the wall.  It would have taxed the attention of the girls under best of circumstances.  The crowds made it definitely not the best of circumstances.

The part of Jorvik that we all enjoyed (and to be fair, this is what people tended to mention most regularly when suggesting we visit) was a ride through a reconstructed Viking village.  <<INSERT GEEKY COMMENTS FROM EX-CONTROLS ENGINEER>> The ride was pretty cool.  Individualized audio commentary in multiple languages and with the guide being either an adult or a child.  The motion control for the cart on the track was fun to watch.  <<END GEEKY COMMENTS FROM EX-CONTROLS ENGINEER>>

There are times it's good to have a deficient sense of smell - like going past this are of the village that everyone else swore had powerful odors.

Or this outhouse, where our friendly guide greeted his grandfather.

Exhausted girls in tow, we made our way from Jorvik to the York Castle Museum.  This staged conflict between Vikings (I think in power) and Angles (I think resisting their authority) distracted them enough to raise their spirits a bit.

The floor of the museum that dealt with toys was mostly static displays.  I tried to cheer the girls up by getting them to follow clues and footsteps to find a hidden bear.  Not so successfully.  Clare cheerfully plopped down next to this castle, which was in one of the few corners of the floor that had tactile exhibits (e.g., toys to play with rather than look at).

Kristine and Elise enjoyed the displays about attire for weddings, funerals, and maternity.

I thought the hearse was cool.

Charis on the other hand ...

All three girls started cheering up when they got to join a "Votes for Women" march.  The good-natured policeman threw them in handcuffs, then released them and offered to make them his deputies.

Kristine's excitement shot through the roof when she found out they had a real 19th century pharmacy, staffed by someone who talked about 19th century medicine.  Her excitement dropped when it became clear that the person was an actor who was committed to following his script and not interested in talking with visitors who were interested in 19th century medicine.

There are very few things in life that a paper and set of colored pencils will not make better.  Including being exhausted and having been dragged by your parents through a couple of museums that you mostly didn't find interesting.

We made one more stop in the museum.  Somehow the girls got themselves locked inside the jail cell.

Spirits revived by the coloring, experience of almost being arrested for suffragette views, and thrill of being locked in jail, we made our way home via a restaurant serving take-away roasts with Yorkshire pudding.  This revived spirits even further and fueled bodies with energy to make a walk around the York wall.  The wall is an impressive structure going back to Roman times.  It's not as imposing in places anymore because they've built up embankments around much of it.  Originally it would have been about twice as far from the top to the ground.  We walked about half of the wall before diminishing daylight sent us back to the flat.  We walked the rest after our trip to Durham.

Open space to run = happy girls

Turrets from which to re-enact battle scenes and shoot arrows - even better!

Sunday morning we made the short train ride north to Durham.  This was Kristine's condition of agreement for our trip to York.  She learned about Durham Cathedral when she was in Scotland as a college student, but wasn't able to see it in person.  It's been on her wish list of places to visit ever since.  The girls were happy to ride on the train.  This picture was before a woman walked past several empty rows in the carriage, looked down at them, and said "Excuse me, you're in my seat.  Please get up."  I can understand kicking someone out of your reserved seat when the carriage is full.  But asking two young children to get up when the carriage is clearly almost empty?  Really?  She doesn't get any cross-cultural allowances from me on that one.

It was a dreary, but not unpleasant day to talk the 3/4 mile from the train station to the cathedral.  Here are a couple views of the cathedral and castle from our walk.

We stopped at a city square part way to the cathedral.  Fortunately for the local pigeons, Charis and Clare decided to play on the benches.

Here's the cathedral from sort of up close.

And the knocker for people seeking sanctuary.  You had to be tall enough to reach the knocker to claim sanctuary in the cathedral.  Elise's desire for refuge after crimes against her father would not be accepted.

The inside of the cathedral (which prohibited photography) was everything Kristine hoped it would be.  She was moved to tears by its beauty.  The girls and I left her to enjoy it while we wandered elsewhere.  Fortunately for us, one of the signs pointed to something comparably wonderful and exciting.  A LEGO replica of the cathedral.

Not only a replica, but one designed to be built by visitors to the cathedral.  All you had to do was convince your accompanying adult to fork over the 1 GBP fee per brick.  And then convince said accompanying adult to let you put on a second brick.  The girls swindled themselves into an unstated number of bricks that completed the tower on the left.

It was enough to make me smile.  Almost.

It was enough to make them smile.

Our last big stop Monday morning was at the Train Museum.  Like Jorvik, it had been highly recommended as being great fun to visit.  Like Jorvik, visiting on the first week day of half-term break was less than ideal.  The trains were well presented and had lots of information available to read.  If you could make your way through the crowds to the plaques on the side.  We contented ourselves with seeing Thomas

And the inside of a 19th century mailroom car.

Sightseeing complete, we walked back into town to grab lunch.  We "just happened" to make our way past the chocolate museum again.  Impulse decision to check inside was rewarded with an open table, which we quickly grabbed so we could finish our trip with some nice chocolate fondue.

New Year's 2015: Cumbria (of pencils, walls, mandolins, and amazing countryside)

We stayed in the village of Applethwaite, just outside Keswick

Several of the trips we've made since coming to the UK were on our radar before we came.  A few have popped up unexpectedly.  Cumbria was the latter, based on a ripple effect that included going to Turkey in October instead of December (because there's no tourist season in Turkey in December), having time to spend after my parents returned to the US, and some friends from Bath mentioning how much fun they've had vacationing in the Lake District.  Enter a website for cottage rentals which, unlike cottages4you, doesn't restrict your stay to beginning on a Friday or Monday, photos of a cottage for 5 showcasing a lovely view of the Cumbrian mountains (fells, to use the local term), and we were all set.

Here's the trek north.  We had a brief detour into Manchester to drop my parents at their hotel for the flight back to the US.  From there it was an uneventful 2 hour drive to the village of Applethwaite, just outside the city of Keswick.  For the record, this was an uneventful drive on the M6.  No, that's not a joke.  We were fortunate to be driving north.  We saw miles of stopped traffic on the M6 going south.

Our first excursion was to the Ullswater Steamer.  My lofty goal was to hop off the steamer, take a hike for a bit, then hop back on and finish the route.  That was all well and good until we stepped out of the car at the pier in Glenridding.  Strong winds + low temperatures = Shawn and Kristine deciding we're not taking our girls on a 2 hr hike that has no access to warmth or shelter.  In fact, like most of the ferry passengers, we didn't really want to ride the outer deck for the trek across the lake.  We contented ourselves with enjoying the view of the surrounding mountains from the mainly inside cabin.

Although we did make a few (usually brief) excursions above deck.

Or, in Clare's case, took advantage of everyone else being above deck to stretch out on the bench.

We stopped for lunch at the Granny Dowbekins Tea Room in Pooley Bridge.  I'm going on record as saying that Clare's looking up at me adoringly.  The husband of the woman who took the photo for us had a t-shirt from climbing Kilimanjaro.  We compared notes briefly.  Kristine has pointed out several times that she remembers our engagement discussion including a promised hike up Kili together.  Maybe someday.

We did a little wandering in Pooley Bridge while deciding where to eat lunch.

Here's the bridge that takes you from the side of the lake with the pier to the side of the lake with the town of Pooley Bridge.  It's wide enough for 1.5 cars.  There are no pedestrian lanes.  There are a couple spots where pedestrians can hide from cars on the bridge.  At this point we had only just left the tea room, so the cold and wind hadn't yet robbed certain members of our family of the will to live (or at least the will to walk peacefully).

In defense of a certain cantankerous 3 yr old, the weather had turned less pleasant over the course of the day.  The five of us made it a few hundred metres around the edge of the lake.

Kristine "graciously" offered to walk ahead with Elise while I took Charis and Clare back into town to try and find a shop where we could stay inside and get warm without making it blatantly obvious that we had no plans to buy anything.

We met up back at the pier and boarded the steamer.  Our steamer today, the Western Belle, was originally commissioned in 1935.  It's had a couple upgrades of its diesel engines, and became part of the Ullswater fleet in 2011.

The ride back to Glenridding added rain to the wind and cold from the morning.  This meant pretty much all the passengers crowded into the inside cabin.  Clare entertained Kristine and I by singing a mournful rendition of "Do you want to build a snowman" to Elise on the other side of this door.

We were in Cumbria at the end of December and beginning of January.  Not surprisingly, we did not escape northern England's wintry weather.  This meant that we spent New Year's Day pretty much inside our cottage.  Which is not a bad thing, and is one of the reasons we've preferentially stayed at cottages instead of B&Bs or hotels.  We've found that the control over our diet makes meals considerably more pleasant, and having a couple extra rooms to use makes creative energy of the girls much easier to channel.  We did some reading

or, in some cases, hiding from father with a camera trying to photograph said reading,

some puzzles on the iPad (strange coincidence that the use of the puzzle app has skyrocketed since my mother came to visit)

and some coloring, fortified by hot drinks.  Our host came by on New Year's Day with three pencil cases from Derwent Pencil Company (formerly in Keswick, now a short distance away in Penrith) for the girls.  He said we absolutely had to visit the pencil museum in Keswick.  He also said we'd easily spend three hours there.  The girls enjoyed the pencils greatly.  I was skeptical about spending three hours in a pencil museum (more on that later).

We also got several visits in the back garden from this male pheasant.

We did venture out to one of the larger outdoor equipment stores in Keswick.  I was hoping to reproduce a tradition Kristine and I had from our summer vacations in Maine that included finding good deals at the LL Bean warehouses in Freeport.  It didn't work.  We did see a very clever conversion of space underneath a large staircase into a children's play area.  I don't think there was enough in the play area to convince the girls they should forgive me for pulling them out of the house on a wet afternoon.  

The weather cleared up enough on the next day that we decided to make the hour-long drive north to Carlisle and visit Hadrian's Wall.  The theory was that we could do some exploring along the wall, then maybe visit another site in Carlisle before driving home.  Good theory, but not for a blustery day in winter.  Just getting from the car to the information center in Lanercost invoked several protests of cold and agony.  Fortunately, there were a couple of period costume pieces inside to offer a distraction.  Here are the girls doing their best to look mean, frightening, and intimidating.  You decide how successful they were.

I donned one of the larger helmets from the time of Edward I.  My assistant got distracted by something in the background.  You can also decide if Charis and Clare did a better job looking scared of us here than they did of looking intimidating earlier.

We took a detour from the information center to the Lanercost Priory, which is at the same site.  I thought the cold would mean no running daughters.  I was wrong.

Because of its location on the border between England and Scotland, the priory has been plundered, damaged, and rebuilt many times in its history.  Henry VIII confiscated the land from the church, it had ups and downs as private property, and eventually got restored as an operational parish church.  We didn't get to explore the ruins that are visible through the main front window.  I thought (not for the first time) as I looked at the vast ceilings, that I'm glad we don't attend a church in an old building like this.  Kristine and the girls would turn into popsicles during the winter.

The cold (but brief - ~200m) walk to the Priory took a lot out of Clare.  She perked up a little when she was able to join her sisters in admiring the nativity display still available at the front of the sanctuary.

It was mid-day by now, and the skies were starting to clear up.  The wind and cold were no kinder though.  Clare and I stayed in the car while Kristine took the older girls out to explore our first encounter with Hadrian's Wall at Bank's Turret.  The skies were clear enough at this stop that we could enjoy views of the surrounding countryside.

Elise lasted longer outdoors at this stop than Charis, who was back in the car with Clare and I after a few minutes.

We drove a couple miles further up the road to Birdoswald Fort (which was closed because it's only open on Saturday and Sunday).  I was still hoping we could all get out for a walk along the wall.  It didn't happen.  The rain had picked up again, so we managed to all get about 100 m from the car park to get this classic "insert disgruntled opinion of parents for making me be in this" photo. 

Kristine took Charis and Clare back to the car while Elise and I did some brief exploring.  After a short (and ultimately rather muddy) battle with the slippery grass, we climbed back up on the wall and walked back to the car.

Appetites for exploring Hadrian's Wall sufficiently wetted, we returned to the Lanercost visitor center to reward ourselves with hot drinks and treats in the tea room before driving back to the cottage.

This lovely sunset when we got back to the cottage was a wonderful change of pace after such a cold and dreary day.

Kristine kept Elise and Clare at the cottage while Charis and I made one more outing.  The Fylde Guitar and mandolin workshop is in Penrith, only 30 min from where we were staying.  I found out about Fylde instruments several years ago when my mandolin instructor in Indianapolis loaned me his Fylde cittern.  I've since heard many good things about Fylde instruments in general, and about Roger Bucknall, who runs the company.  I figured since we would be in the area I'd ask about getting a tour of the workshop.  To my great delight, Roger agreed to let us come in even though he was supposed to be on holiday.  It was a fascinating tour.  I figure about 80% of the time was spent learning about the different woods he has in stock from all around the world.  Another 10% was a tour of the workshop - largely of machines that Roger has built to make life easier for himself and improve repeatability of his designs over his 40 years of making instruments.  The last 10% was sitting in his office playing a couple instruments he had in stock - a cittern, octave mandolin, and a couple of mandolins.  Roger and his wife were incredibly gracious hosts.  They gave us tea, let Charis play one of the mandolins, and offered suggestions about places to visit in the area.  I left without buying an instrument, but not without a serious amount of longing for the Single Malt mandolin that Roger let me play.  After all, beyond being a lovely instrument with beautiful tone and clean action - things that even an amateur like me can pick up on - how many people can say their mandolin has been built out of wood recycled from the whisky trade?  As it was, self-control (and the knowledge that our trusty Golf was already stuffed to overflowing) prevailed.  For the time being, anyway.  At the time of this blog post, Kristine has given me permission to get a Single Malt mandolin if I promise to take her to Alaska to get lots of Qiviut yarn.

Our last full day in Keswick was supposed to include a trip to the pencil museum.  However, we encountered a slight delay.  I'm learning (not quickly enough, Kristine would probably say), that there are times one does not just stop knitting and move on with life.  Knitting in a group, especially with your children, is one of those times.  What's a fellow to do when the response to his statement about preparing to leave is a question from his daughter "How do you stop in the middle of a row?"

We did make it out of the cottage and to the pencil museum.  Our host was right.  It was very well set up, and we all enjoyed it.  Well, maybe not everyone enjoyed being greeted by this graphite miner when we entered.

Pencils are pretty boring, mundane, utilitarian tools, right?  Nope, Shawn.  Wrong.  They're the source of popular phrases in modern discourse.

They're in the Guinness World Records.

And, most interestingly for me, they were valuable tools of espionage during WWII.  In fact, there was an entire wall dedicated to one particular effort during WWII by the fellow who was the inspiration for the character of Q in the James Bond films.

Charles Fraser Smith asked the folks at the Derwent Pencil Company to design a pencil that could hide a map and compass inside it.  These pencils were given to flight crews when they made their bombing runs over Europe.  The idea was that if you were shot down, the compass plus map of Europe and escape routes would help you get out.  Plus, nobody would think to confiscate a pencil off you since it was a standard navigator's tool.  So if you got shot down and sent to a prison camp, then you could also give the maps inside the pencils to other POWs who were planning to escape.  The other interesting bit of information from this exhibit is that Derwent tried to reproduce this pencil in the late 90's as a commemorative item.  They almost couldn't do it.  With the help of memories from one of the few chaps still alive who had worked on the project (which was done in secret and after hours), they were able to come up with something close enough.  But the manager of the project was pretty candid in his respect for the skill of the folks working on this project without the so-called benefits of modern technology.  My dormant anthropologist brain cells want a project ...

I was interested in the espionage side of the WWII pencil exhibit.  The girls were interested in the pilot's clothing.  Clare so she could smile,

and Elise so she could pretend to fly.

I mentioned earlier that I was skeptical we'd need three hours for this museum?  After two hours, the girls were going strong.  They enjoyed the exhibits, and they especially enjoyed the rooms that were set up with a range of Derwent pencil products (paper, pencils, water brushes, and sharpeners) for visitors to create their own art.  Evidently the museum offers free lessons to visitors from local artists who will teach them some basic principles of drawing and coloring.  My Oaks Academy counterparts in Indianapolis would be proud.

Charis reluctantly agreed to leave, but only after she finished her two pieces of art.

While I respect the museum's creative ability to encourage visitors to put pencil to paper, I also thought this vintage vehicle was one of their more interesting artifacts.

We split up for the afternoon.  Elise and I went back near Ullswater to do a hike at the Aira Force Falls.  Here's the route - about 1.3 miles total.

We found these little falls shortly after beginning the hike.  Elise tried to convince me they were the ones we were looking for (our driver in Turkey did something similar, which is where she got the idea).  I was not amused.  I told her we had to keep hiking.

The real falls are spanned by two different bridges.  Here's the first bridge.

And the view of the real falls with the second bridge from our vantage point on the first one.  Much more impressive than the little ones Elise tried to swindle me into.

We kept going upstream from the bridge, which took us off the map at the beginning of our hike.  This gave us the freedom to joke with each other about getting lost, or (even worse) having to backtrack.  Fortunately we found another bridge to cross, which was considerably less impressive.  Hence the lack of photo.  However, we were not out of joking worries, because the path coming downstream wasn't next to the river.  We were thus much gratified to find that after walking long enough, there was indeed a fork in the path that we followed downhill and found got us back to the stream.  Elise raised her arms in celebration.

Here's the lower bridge from the other side of the stream.  The publicity photos about this site from the National Trust really highlight the variation in colors from the terrain.  This photo sort of captures that, but doesn't do justice to the beauty of the landscape.

Part way downstream from the bridge, we encountered a slippery-looking route up the side of the hill that re-entered the main path after a few metres.  I made a silent mental note about how doing this walk with a group of squirly boys would involve all of them going up the detour, and how glad I was that Elise commented but kept walking.  We came around the corner and Elise piped up with "Daddy, may I please climb up that path?"  Naturally, to serve me right for my silent thoughts, she's actually picked the tricker route up the hill.

Justified hero shot after completing her ascent.

Hike at Aira Force complete, we took a quick trip in the car back to Pooley Bridge so Elise could show me the walk next the lake that she did with Kristine.  Note the hoods from both sweater and coat pulled up.  I think that's the first time this winter that the cold finally got the better of her warm-blooded nature.

It was well after 4:30 by the time we turned around to head back to the car.  Meaning we finished our hike in the dark.  The proper dark.

In the meantime, Kristine had a lovely walk around the village of Applethwaite with Charis and Clare.  Here are some of her photos so you can vicariously admire the beauty of the Cumbrian landscape that we got to enjoy.

Our final stop on the drive home the next day was at the Beatrix Potter museum in Windermere.  To be honest, it was less than impressive, especially after how well set up the pencil museum was.  Elise captured it best.  "Daddy, Beatrix Potter was a children's author, but it seemed like half of the museum was for grownups.  And they expected you to have read all the books before you came."  The displays, like this one of Jemima Puddleduck, were obviously put together with considerable time and effort.  But giving guests a small touch screen with 5-6 bits of information, and then asking them not to touch any of the exhibits?  Really?

Elise and Charis braved the outdoors to explore this garden while trying to answer questions in the 8 page pamphlet they got.  Elise handled the complexity of the 8 pages reasonably well, even though she wasn't able to find several of the answers.  Charis was understandably frustrated.  See Elise's previous comment about the museum being tailored for adults.

The picture next to Peter Rabbit didn't turn out (insert brother Daniel's reminder that he's happy to tutor me if I get him a ticket over here).  We did get this one of Clare with Mr. McGregor.

From the museum, it was another largely uneventful drive south on the M6.  We didn't have the clear roads that we had when driving north five days earlier, but we only lost about a half hour.  Considering this was the M6, and especially considering it was the M6 on a weekend, I'll call that a success.