Life in Northern Towns

Up the road from Bowness-On-Windermere is WindermereTown .   Whereas Bowness is the main tourist trap for Lake Windermere, Windermere Town is more of a proper town with train station and supermarkets. Parking in Windermere is easy with a car park close to the town centre and plenty of free on- street parking.   As it was a Sunday we managed to park on the street.   The good thing about the car park is that there are public toilets, which is handy after a long drive.   It may be 20p for the privilege of using them, but they didn’t smell and were well maintained. The town itself is fairly self-contained with a one-way system, which helps the traffic as the streets are not wide. Windermere has quite a few independent shops.   However as it was a Sunday and not a tourist trap half the shops were closed, including most of the charity shops.   Neil was somewhat disappointed by this fact. Then again visiting northern towns on a Sunday is always a lo...

You have to remember there are two towns by Lake Windermere - Windermere , which isn’t on the lake side but up the hill near the train station and Bowness-On-Windermere which is by the lake.   This fact has confused me before. If you are looking for some retail action on a Sunday in the Lake District, Bowness-On-Windermere is one of the best places to go.   Everywhere is open and it’s always jam-packed full of people. First and foremost, parking in Bowness-On-Windermere can be a pain.   We tried to get parked in the car park near The World of Beatrix Potter and failed miserably.   Bowness is a very popular destination and you really need to get here early.   In the end we drove up the hill towards Windermere and found a very tight spot on a side road at the edge of Bowness.   On the plus side it was free parking, on the down side it took me ages to squeeze into the space. As we wandered down the hill the shops tended to be independent...

On our trip we have been revisiting different places and Kendal is one of those places. I do worry about the town, in recent years it has become much quieter.   It was the last Saturday of the month and I was hoping to see a bustling town, but sadly not.   Where do the shoppers go if they don’t go to Kendal?   I’m mystified. We parked in our usual pay and display spot near the Abbot Hall Art Gallery .   There was a bit of a nightmare with the pay and display machine as it wasn’t issuing tickets.   On previous visits we did notice they were very sharp with the parking tickets.   After an abortive attempt at phoning through to pay on the automatic payment system we just got tickets at the art gallery car park and hoped the parking attendant wouldn’t notice. As ever there were plenty of charity shops, but they contained nothing too exciting.   We have noticed that a number of vintage / antique shops have sprung up and I can’t help but think ...

I can’t believe I’ve made it to blog post 100.   So it’s quite apt the place I’m blogging about is my favourite place in Cumbria – Cartmel . We’ve been to Cartmel before just on day trips, however we’d always promised ourselves to stay here.   So this year I booked Holly Cottage for late September, which is always a tricky time weather wise. Getting to Cartmel is straightforward from Manchester – M61, M6 and A590.   Once you turn off the A590 to Cartmel it’s just country roads, not even B roads.   You do have to have your wits about you as there are twists and turns and the roads narrow on occasion.   I was nervous the first few times driving on these roads, but once you get used to them they are easier to navigate. Our cottage was on the edge of Cartmel near Cartmel Priory.   It’s a beautiful location and the cottage overlooks a field.   The only problem was that it only had on-street parking and Cartmel can be really busy especially as the...