To the Lakes of England (1)

Over Easter, I went to the Lake District National Park, in the English county of Cumbria, in what is the considered the most beautiful corner of England. In this series of blog posts I will share my experiences that might inform the uninitiated as to why William Wordsworth thought the lake district were more beautiful than the Alps despite the English mountains being upwardly challenged! In this first part, I will write about the plans I made for my trip and nothing about the trip itself.

I decided to go to the Lake District for Easter, way back in January, when I was still on my Christmas-New Year holiday in Chennai. I made my first plans, looking for train or coach routes and hotels in early February. And finding a Bed & Breakfast with a vacant single room was already proving to be difficult though I was searching more than 6 weeks ahead of my proposed trip. The booking process involved one whole week of evening web browsing and one failed attempt at booking one in Keswick, in the North Lakes - and all this when I could have just called the Tourist Information Centre and asked them to make a booking for me! Following this I was forced to shift my base to Windermere town, on the shores of Windermere lake, the longest in England. I was going to stay in Beckmead Gust House here. I would be staying here from Thursday, 20th March to Monday, 24th March.

Then I purchased my train tickets including seat reservations where possible. I made a particular note of getting seats reserved following the rather frustrating experience at London's Paddington station durin Easter last year that put paid to my plans of travelling to Penzance and Land's End in Cornwall.

I then booked myself on a bus tour of ten of the lakes, run by Mountain Goat bus tours. I expected this to give me a good overview of the sights in the National Park that I could investigate in more detail later on this trip or future trips. But otherwise, I felt overwhelmed by the options at my disposal - I was faced with the problem of too many! How did I tackle this problem? Did I really enjoy my trip? And most importantly, was the Weather God favourable - the forecast looked bleak the day before I was to leave!

(to be continued)