Jonathan Thomas (00:13)
Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast. The podcast for people who love British travel, history and culture. This week, we're going to do something a little different. We're going to start an irregular series of podcasts that we're calling the Anglotopia Guide to Blank. And our first guide is going to be to Cumbria and the Lake District. I've actually been to Cumbria and the Lake District and it's not something that I've written a lot about or shared a lot about on the podcast before.

For reasons I'll get into it little bit. But I thought it was as good a time as any to share my experiences with Cumbria and how you can have a nice and enjoyable holiday in the Lake District. First of all, I also need to test some new podcast recording software before I inflict it upon our guests. So this is me being the guinea pig of this new software. So.

We will start at the beginning. Now, Cumbria and the Lake District have very romantic destinations. They're famous for literature, they're famous for culture, but it's also Cumbria and the Lake District are very remote. They're at the tippy top of Northwest England. They're hard to get to. A lot of Americans don't even make the journey or consider visiting it on their trips, but...

Cumbria and the Lake District are huge destinations for the British themselves. And many would argue that the soul of British culture and literature kind of lives in the Lake District, mostly because of its connections with William Wordsworth and his poetry. So we're going to talk about all of that. So I think the first sort of thing we should do is kind of explain what Cumbria and the Lake District are. They're separate.

things and where they are geographically. Like I said, they're in Northwest England, at very top. You go any further, you're going to Scotland. If you go south, you're going towards Manchester and Liverpool and the other northern cities. And so it's kind of wedged between those northern powerhouses and Scotland. But it's kind of on a little peninsula, peninsular area that makes it very remote from the rest of Britain.

And actually it was the furthest point that the Romans went when they had conquered Britain. actually built a fort at Hardknot that had a view of the Irish Sea. And that was like the furthest extended Roman incursion into northern England besides Hadrian's Wall. So it's a very quintessentially English destination.

and it has a long and bloody history as a borderland between England and Scotland. It used to be called Cumbria, now it's called Cumbria, and Cumbria kind of encompasses the entire structural political entity of the Lake District. As in all of the Lake District is within Cumbria. Cumbria is the county

And that and not all of the county encompasses the Lake District, which is confusing. I know the Lake District is composed primarily of the area set out in the Lake District National Park, which is with, which is almost, I believe all completely within Cumbria and that area. It's probably like two thirds of Cumbria is the Lake District. And that's where the lakes are these beautiful glacial mountainous lakes that are something akin to what you would see in Switzerland.

or like in the mountains in New York. Now to give you some kind of comparison, like these are small lakes. That doesn't mean they're not impressive. Like I'm from Indiana, I live near Lake Michigan. To me Lake Michigan is a lake and Lake Michigan is massive. The Great Lakes are massive. one third, I believe they're a quarter of the world's seas.

The lakes by comparison in Cumbria are very small. mean, the biggest one is only a few miles long, but it doesn't mean they don't pack a beauty punch. these lakes, the way they are carved into the landscape and the way they're shaped by the mountains, it creates this unique and beautiful place that has inspired literature for generations. And, you know,

People say, we have lakes and mountains in America. Why would you want to go to England to see lakes and mountains? Well, they're beautiful. That's a reason to see them at all. But also it sees literary and historical connections that make them very much worth seeing. And if anything, if you were an English major like I was, it's where William Wordsworth was inspired. It's where he was born and raised and lived his life.

and that's where he wrote his most famous poems. So, you know, it's, it's, you cannot throw a stone in the lake to a about somebody mentioning Wordsworth. But it's also that literary tradition continues to this day, and that kind of is the segue into why I was even there to begin with. So, story time, everybody. So back in just 2015, 2016,

I read an amazing book called The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks. And it is what the title says on the tin. It is a lyrical exploration of the life of a shepherd of hard-wicked sheep in the Lake District. And it's a beautiful picture of a pastoral way of life that in lot of places doesn't exist anymore, but that is kind of

jealously held on to by the people who pursue it and It's one of the best British nature books I've ever read and the author actually James actually came to the US I don't remember when it's like 2015 or 2016 and he came to the University of Chicago and did a speech and so I went and saw him in person and he signed my book and Spoiler alert, but he actually remembered me from from this book signing so

So I read this book, I loved it. then fast forward to 2018 and James was famous. He actually got the book deal because he he chronicled his his life as a shepherd on Twitter and on social media. And that's he went viral.

So fast forward a couple of years and ⁓ I actually followed James Rebanks on social media and that's how he got the book deal. He got famous for going viral for chronicling his life as a shepherd on social media with gorgeous pictures. He's a great photographer as well as a great writer and people just kind of fell in love with him chronicling his way of life and so he wrote this great book. And so again, I followed him for years on social media and one day he tweeted out,

that he, in partnership with another author named Kathryn Aalto who wrote The Natural World of Winnie the Pooh, that they were partnering to launch something called the Rule Writers Institute. And they wanted to open applications up for the first cohort of applicants for a writers retreat that would take place on James' farm in Cumbria. And their goal of this retreat was to foster

a new generation of writers who want to write about Britain's landscape and culture and countryside. And I read that tweet and I immediately thought that that Rural Writers Institute was geared exactly towards me as a writer. I am in love with the British landscape. I've been writing about it for 20 years. And in the pursuit of Anglotopia and writing about Britain for Anglotopia,

This is getting into the weeds a little bit, but I wasn't quite doing the kind of writing that I wanted to do about Britain I was very like, you know writing top ten lists and travel guides is much different than Than writing about and inhabiting a landscape or doing the kind of writing that James did in his book that's the kind of writing I really wanted to do and so I immediately put in an application and I wrote an essay basically explaining that that criteria that

I wanted to learn how to write more thoughtfully about Britain's landscape and culture. And that I, you know, that's why I wanted a place in the course. And I submitted the letter with some writing samples and, you know, crossed my fingers and hoped that something would happen. Well, a few weeks later, I got an email from Kathryn and they had accepted me into the first cohort. So I was...

astonished and thrilled and it was amazing to be chosen and that they saw something in my writing that was worth spending this writer's retreat with them to learn from some of greatest writers and writing in Britain right now. and I've kind of written about this experience in a few ways, but I've never really written about...

the writer's retreat itself or talk much about it because it was kind of a very private thing. There were like 15 of us in the first group and it was a very, it was one of the best sort of weekends of my life, communing with the landscape, learning about writing from Kathryn and James, meeting these famous authors and.

They also brought in a bunch of other authors who gave lectures and talked to us about writing and the landscape. And I mean, it was incredible. I cannot tell you how wonderful this experience was. But on the practical side of it, after I got accepted to this course, I was accepted to believe in May, and this thing was happening in July. So I had to plan an entire trip to the UK with like eight weeks notice and figure out how to pay for it.

and needs must I figured it out but it was it required a lot of planning and you know I so that's how I kind of ended up in Cumbria in the Lake District and so you know because I have a wonderful supportive wife who supports my career and my travel adventures when they're necessary she couldn't come with me because it was I was the only one invited to the course

and she couldn't get away. So she'd watch the kids and I could travel to the UK for this thing. so, and to make the most of it, we're like, well, you're going over there, you might as well go for more than just the retreat. You should go for at least a week. And that way you can do all the Anglotopia things that you would do when you visit a new place and see things and explore things and then do the writer's retreat and then come home. So.

As a consequence, I found myself suddenly planning a trip to the Lake District in Cumbria. And it's a place I've always wanted to visit, and so I was delighted to be able to do this. And so I think that it makes a great way as a springboard to kind of tell you about the things I saw and did and experienced so that you can plan your own trips to Cumbria and the Lake District. So I'll kind of just walk you through the trip.

And then I'm sorry. I'm going through my show notes here. So I talked about geography so Getting to Cumbria and the Lake District is the hard part. Like I said, it's very remote It's you know at the tippy top of England it's as far away from London as you can get going into Scotland and It's Within Britain, you know, you can get there by train. There are airports in northern England

But when you're coming from the US, that's a different sort of set of logistical problems because it does not make sense to fly into London if your destination is the Lake District because you're going to get to London and then you're still six, seven hours by car from the Lake District, you know, or a all day train ride or a coach ride. It doesn't make sense to fly into Heathrow. But most

Transatlantic flights from Chicago where I live in New York. They go into Heathrow or Gatwick or the London airports So but I was lucky that back in 2018 American Air American Airlines Was offering seasonal flights from Chicago to Manchester one flight a day It was even every day of week But they were running it during the summer and they do not run this flight anymore Because demand was too low

But when I went, it was great. was flying. It flew direct from Chicago to Manchester. so now Manchester is not particularly close to the Lake District, but it's closer than London is. And so I should also mention before I move on that you could also fly into Edinburgh and drive down from Edinburgh. That will probably be closer. That's much closer than flying from London. However,

Not a lot of airlines fly to Edinburgh. At least none fly to Edinburgh from Chicago. I think United has a seasonal, but other than that, like if you want to fly to Edinburgh, you got to fly from New York, which I don't want to do because I live in Chicago. So anyway, the plan was for me to fly into Manchester. I flew on American Airlines, which was the first time actually in like 20 trips that I flew an airline other than British Airways to Britain.

I like to think that it was okay because I used my British Airways Avios to book it and I used the British Airways system to book it and American Airlines is in a co-share partnership with British Airways anyway. So it didn't feel like cheating on British Airways besides they weren't flying me to Manchester anyway. So I flew to Manchester and then I rented a car because again,

That's really the best way to get around Cumbria and the Lake District is to have a car. You could go, unless you're in a tour group on a coach that is going from destination to destination, you're on your own, really the best way to get around is by car because the Lake District is very poorly served by trains and buses because it's so remote and it's so, the population there isn't high and it has a very seasonal.

tourist traffic. So there are very few trains. There are very few buses. You want to get around Cumbria, you need a car. So I rented a car. And so, but the problem is that Manchester is two hours from Cumbria in the Lake District. So I had to get off of a plane and drive two hours to the Lake District. So it was a nice drive. I've never...

I never driven up there before, so I was perfectly happy driving somewhere new. I stopped at the famous Motorway Services, I believe that was, I think it's outside of.

think it's called the Lancaster Services. should have looked this up before I it. It's the one that looks like a UFO taking off. So I stopped at that Motorway Services because you I love a good motorway services station. And then drove to Cumbria. And so the plan was to stay in a single place for the entire week. A lot of us in the course, we...

of corresponded before the course. We're all kind of staying in the same hotels and B &Bs so that we could all like carpool and kind of make the most of being in close proximity. So a lot of us were staying at the Troutbeck Inn, which is just outside of Penrith, and Troutbeck, for those who don't know the geography of the area, is actually not in the Lake District National Park, but it is in Cumbria.

but on the very edge of both. So ⁓ you're kind of, next to a main highway, but you can see the mountains. It's a beautiful spot. It's very, again, very remote, like other than the hotel, which is also a pub, there was like nothing around. And so that was where I was gonna stay. I was gonna stay there the whole week.

because I arrived off of transatlantic flight and even though I had a two hour drive, I still arrived before the hotel really wanted to accommodate me, but she was kind enough to let me in early, got my room, then I was basically, like I had the whole rest of the day to do something. So I was jet-lagged, I was hungry, and I needed a cup of tea. So I thought, I found that there was a National Trust,

property nearby called the Aero Force Waterfall National Trust. I thought, oh, go for a stroll, see a waterfall, and I'll have some National Trust tea and cake. And so I drove over there, and Aero Force is right by Ullswater which is one of the most famous lakes in Cumbria. I'm one of those people that had that famous print from Ikea of Ullswater in my bathroom for many years. And so I went to Aero Force, went for the walk, saw the waterfall, saw some beautiful

Flora and fauna, discovered the purple foxglove flowers, which were beautiful. And then I got, I walked back to the tea room and I got there too late and it was closed. So I didn't get my tea and cake. but yeah, but by then I could go back to the hotel and get some proper, get a proper meal because they were ready for me. And so I love the Troutbeck Inn It was a great place to explore Cumbria in the Lake District.

And so I arrived like two or three days before the Riders Retreat was starting. So this gave me a chance to to basically explore Cumbria Lake District as at my leisure. so over the next few days, I tried to do kind of like a highlights tour of things in the Lake District that would interest me or that I should see that would provide valuable content. And a lot of these things I have written about

I have shared lots about, I'll link in the show notes to the archive of all the articles I've written about the places I went and saw, but I'm going to talk about them. So the first place I visited was the Castle Rig Stone ⁓ Circle, which is one of the Neolithic or prehistoric stone circles in my Lake District. And it's in a beautiful spot that over, where there's mountains over mountain valleys overlooking you, gorgeous.

Mysterious place. No one knows why it's there. But then you know, that's how we don't know much about any of the stone circles It's neat. I an article about it. I'll link it in the show notes Then I went to Derwent To the Derwent Pencil Museum, which is in Kazakh, I believe It's not in Derwent. It's not on Derwent water, but the pencil museum was a was a new attraction at the time and Is dedicated to Derwent pencil company

I went to the museum, I went right when it opened for the day. I haven't met a small provincial English museum I didn't particularly love, so it was lovely. Although there were quite a few, there were probably more pencil sharpeners as museum pieces than I could appreciate truly. But they go into the history of the pencils and lead mining and all that. And then you exit through a gift shop, which obviously was filled with Derwent pencils.

They were very expensive, but I bought some for my kids back home. And, you know, there was a cafe on site and all that. And then I explored Keswick, which was beautiful. And yeah, it was a great start to the day. And then I had to, I wasn't planning on visiting DoveCottage which is Wordsworth's famous cottage where he lived his adult life and have time.

But I did have time to visit one Wordsworth attraction and so that was going to be his childhood home which is located in the town slash village of Cockermouth. That is a real place name. I am not being profane. It is a real place called Cockermouth. It's because it's at the mouth of a river called the Cocker. Let's get your get your sniggers in.

you would like to know more funny, amusing British place names, we have a list on our website, which I will link to in the show notes. But it's a beautiful town. And so in the middle of it is Wordsworth House National Trust property. And it's a Georgian house kind of set up as it was when he was a child growing up there. You walk in and it kind of feels like the family had just walked out for the day. Super cool, super atmospheric.

You learn about Wordsworth, learn about Dorothy Wordsworth, who is, you know, as important as Wordsworth in literary canon, and how they grew up there together. There's a beautiful garden out back, which made my hay fever go nuts. That's another thing. I went, you know, this was the middle of the summer and my, you know, back home, I don't really have allergies in the summer anymore. My body's kind of used to it. But when I was in Cumbria,

My body was not used to all the foreign allergens. I had bad allergies the entire time I was there. And the allergy medicine we got, and this was a problem actually for even for the British locals who weren't from the area, they had allergy problems too. So we all traded TIPSA, which allergy medicines try. But anyway, I'm digressing. we went to, Wordsworth House was great. And then, but since it was a National Trust property, you know what that means?

There was a tea and cake in the cafe on site. So I had a lovely tea and cake. And then I got in my car and drove on to my next destination, which was Broome Castle, which is back towards where I was staying. Broome Castle is a castle ruins sitting on the edge of a river. I think it's the trout back. I could be wrong. And it's a beautiful, beautiful castle ruin.

Because it was a weekday and I was like the only one there that's except for another American family who managed to come that far north Who were also walking around? And I will link to an article I've written about that and the show notes with pictures Yeah, and so And then the next thing I did I don't know if it was the same day or the next day All kind of blends together at this point

I took a ride on the famous Ullswater steamer boats. So Ullswater, it's a long glacial lake and the steamer boats, run from end to end throughout the day. So a lot of people will take the steamer from, what's the name of it?

can't remember the name of it, but I have an article about it which I will link to at the show notes. And Pooley Bridge, yes. Boats leave from Pooley Bridge and then they go down to the lake and then they come back. In the summer season sometimes they'll stop at other places and some people will walk, will do a combination of taking the steamer, they'll do a walk to another steamer boat stop and then they'll get back on the boat.

⁓ It's a great way to spend the day out because it's the steamer ride even though the lake is small You know, takes like an hour on the steamer. It's old Victorian steamer boat. I love a good steam engine So I was thrilled although it was very hot very hungry and very thirsty So even though had a snack, I was very hungry. And so we took a took the steamer across the lake Stopped at the other end for a few minutes and then got back on the boat went back the other way

And it was, I enjoyed going back more than I did going the other way. The article I'm going to share in the show notes kind of explain why it's kind of had to slow down and take in where I was and what I was doing rather than stop trying to hit everything on my to-do list. it's just kind of just, you know, my camera batteries died so I couldn't work.

And I had no phone signal. So like I just had to sit there and take in the glorious view I was experiencing on its own rather than trying to record it. And so that was like a pivot point in the trip for me. was like slow down, be more thoughtful about what you're doing. And yeah, it was, it was, it was, was one of those nice Zen moments. So, so, and then, so after that,

uh, uh, the writers retreat, all that was starting. So I wouldn't be a tourist anymore. Um, and it would be all in on the writers retreat. And so that night we had a dinner at Tropic Inn where we all met each other for the first time. Um, we met James for the first time, uh, and Katherine and, um, and then the next day we would begin the retreat. And so again,

I'm not going to talk about the retreat. It was very much a private experience. I have written about bits and pieces of it, and I'll share those in the show notes. basically, it was the most instructive and useful.

time in my writing career I had since I was in college, you know, the skills and trade of being an English major. And so it was inspiring. It was super cool to see where someone like James works. I've had desk envy ever since I saw his oak tables where he works and his view is of the Cumbria Fells. And it's incredible. mean,

How can you not be inspired to write about it when you live there like that? And so he, and during the course, we were all kind of very conscious that he was taking a break from working on his next book so that he could teach us. And that made it a lot more meaningful because he was having a lot of trouble with it. And that book did eventually come out and it's called English Pastoral. And it's more about him running his farm and...

how he's trying to improve the landscape in Cumbria Lake District, not just for him, but for fellow farmers and how he treats the fact that his family has been on this land for hundreds of years. it's a fantastic, a fantastic sequel to A Shepherd's Life. Highly recommend getting this book as well. It's a very good book. And it's kind of cool to think that this is what he was wrestling with while we were, while we were.

learning from him. it's very cool. I also recommend Katherine's book, which she wrote shortly after, where she profiles a bunch of famous women nature writers. And again, I'll link that in the show notes. But yeah, we all came away from the experience learning about writing in a way we hadn't thought of before. We're all inspired.

I picked up some new techniques and it also helped me re-evaluate how I write about Britain and it also, so it helped sort of after that, I don't know if this is of interest to anybody, but I'll talk about it anyway. You can skip ahead if it doesn't interest you, but while I was doing this and before and after,

I was working on a travel memoir about a called Adventures in Anglotopia. And I was really wrestling with it and struggling to kind of make it relevant and make it work and make it cohesive. after the writer's retreat and after talking, workshopping the book with a lot of my fellow classmates and with James and Kathryn kind of of getting like a clicked.

what needed to happen with the book and what I needed to do with it. And so when I got home, I basically like kind of, didn't scrap what I was working on, but I kind of restarted it anew and eventually did finish the travel memoir after like another year or so of hard work. And then began the process of trying to find a publisher and get an agent and all that. And by 2020, it was very clear that I had talked to an agent.

a couple agents and they were like this this is a great book, but We don't think there's a market for it in the US. So we're not not interested and you know as the as the founder of an American publication dedicated to these things I knew there was a market for it and so I Ended up publishing it myself in 2020. And so the link to where you can buy it will be in the show notes And that book was highly successful it really

But it also showed a shift in the way I wanted to write about Britain and was more thoughtful and less travel guide oriented. And it really also fed the next book I wrote, which was End End Britain from Lands and the John o'Groats that experience which we took later that year. When we were on the trip, I approached it so much differently.

than I would have before the Rural Writers Institute. then again, another book came from that. so, and now I'm working on the third one. So, which will come out hopefully later this autumn. it was, the Writers Institute was great. Left with some, with new friends. You know, I still talk to James and Kathryn occasionally.

There's a WhatsApp, a very vibrant WhatsApp group from all the former classmates. And it's fun watching a lot of my other former classmates, their books are finally coming out that they've always wanted to write, or they have articles published in very famous magazines. And it's really cool to see all these people who were fostered in this, you know, weekend long writers retreat are finally flourishing in nature writing and landscape writing and countryside writing in Britain. So it's really cool to see. So.

That's enough about the Rural Writers Institute because I said I wasn't going to talk much about it but I ended up talking a lot about it. I also wanted to recommend The Place of Tides which is James's latest book which came out last year. And this is not about Britain and actually timeline wise he had this experience shortly after the Rural Writers Institute and he spent a whole season on the small island in Norway.

with this incredible woman who is a down feather farmer. I'm not doing the description justice here. It's a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it. It's very good. And it shows that James has range beyond just writing about English landscapes. So can't wait to see what he writes next. So the back to traveling around Cumbria, the Lake District enough about

enough about my own writing about it. So when the course was over, I still had another day to explore the area. And so for the longest time, I had wanted to drive something called the Hardknott Pass. And for those who are unfamiliar, the Hardknott Pass is Britain's most steepest and dangerous road. And

It's funny, long, long time ago in our early Anglotopia days, 2008, 2009, one of our, we had a columnist who lived in Northern England. She was an American and she had learned how to drive there. And she wrote a whole article about driving the Hardknott pass and how it was an achievement because she had to drive a manual and it was really hard and it was a big deal. And so ever since then, I've always like, well, I want to do that too. But so I was determined to drive the Hardknott.

pass with my final day in Cumbria and all my classmates in the RWI were suitably impressed. They were like, well, be careful. I mean, it's a public road. It's not that dangerous, but it has a 15 % grade. And if you don't know what that means, the regulations on US highways are like that the grade can't be more than 3 or 4%. So this is 15%.

So it's steep. And once you're committed to doing this drive or once you're on it, you can't turn around because it's basically the way the traffic moves and the way the curves move. Like you're either going one way or you're going to need like mountain rescue to go rescue you. There are points where the road basically falls off the side of the mountain where like you look down and there's just mountains.

and you're like, I hope my car doesn't go down there. And so I set off for that journey. That was a lot of fun, very nerve wracking. I was very glad I didn't have Mrs. Anglotopia with me for that one. She gets very nervous in the car sometimes. I imagine she would have been very nervous going through the Hardknott pass. And it was one of the coolest things I've ever done and travel in Britain.

you know, this idea that you have to work to see this landscape and you have to, you know, to get to get through this pass, you have to really do some scary driving and but even while you're doing it, you're experiencing this landscape in a way that almost nobody ever does because a lot of people, again, don't come this far north and they're certainly not going to drive the Hardknott pass. They're going to go around it. And so I didn't go around it. I went through it.

And so after the Hardknott Pass is the Hardknott Roman Fort, which I mentioned earlier, which is the of the furthest extent that the Roman Empire went. It's a really atmospheric place. It's partially been rebuilt through conservation work. It's mostly a ruin. But again, it's like half the ruin has been rebuilt. So how much is authentic? You just use your imagination.

It's really cool to imagine Roman soldiers, many of whom were not from Britain, were from far corners of the Roman Empire, standing there at the edge of civilization. You can see the Irish Sea and see the Isle of Man off in the distance and you know there's more land there. It's super cool. So then I drove from there through the Esk Valley and came across a steam railway.

And those who follow Anglotopia will know that I cannot say no to a good steam railway. And it's a, was a narrow gauge railway that runs the length. It runs from the station head all the way to, the seaside at Ravenglass, which is like the coolest name for a town ever or a village ever. And so I got, when I got there, I didn't know this train was there. It was a serendipitous discovery. And so I was like, all right.

I get to go on a train ride. I'm thrilled. So I arrived just in time for the next train. So I hopped, I bought a ticket, hopped on and rode the train. It was very hot that day in the train. It's a narrow gauge, open air railway. was so, but it was fun. You ride the train through some of most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen in my life. And we rode it all the way to Raven glass at the sea. They deposit you at the seaside.

You walk through the village, there's not much there, only a couple of pubs and beautiful landscape. yeah, went for a little stroll. There's a museum in the station there. And then like an hour later, it was time to take the train back to the station. And so I did that, which took another hour. By then I was...

Getting tired, but I was like, you know, I like I'm still here. I still got the res, you know, it's only early afternoon. We've got the rest of the day and so I Next drove I looked on my phone to see what was nearby and there was a castle nearby and so I was like, alright I'm going to see a castle because why not and so I Drove from the train station through the Esk Valley to the end

and came upon Muncaster Castle. And if that name sounds familiar, I will link in the show notes to the episode of the podcast.

If Muncaster Castle sounds familiar, that's because I have actually done a podcast interview with the husband of the owner of Muncaster Castle, which was a fascinating discussion. I'll link to that in the show notes. And you can learn all about Muncaster Castle and its fascinating history. It was my last stop for the day and it was phenomenal. Again,

It was the middle of the week in the summer and I had like the place to myself. So I, you know, wandered around the castle, wandered around the grounds, um, enjoyed every bit of it and, uh, went for a nice stroll. It was, it was peak. I was at peak happiness, you know, I'd done a cool drive. I ridden a steam train, even though it narrow gauge, narrow gauges are cool.

And then I got to go to Sea Castle. So it was great. It was a great day out. And so I was there for a couple hours and then it was time to basically head back to my hotel, which was very far away. And I, oh, I should mention that you go by Scaffold Pike when you go through the Esk Valley, which is the tallest mountain in England. I was not going to be climbing that day.

But I needed to get back to my hotel and I did not want to go back through the Hardknott Pass. So I was like, once was enough. But because the way Cumbria and the legislature was laid out, going around the Hardknott Pass requires going on a very, long circuitous drive around the coastline of Cumbria and back up through the middle of the county. So that's what I did.

And you know, when I'm in England, I love driving. I mean, I love driving back home too. I like driving lugbuses. I'm from the Midwest, you We love driving eight hours to nowhere. So I am at my happiest sitting in a rental car in England, classic FM playing on the radio and just driving. And so I drove the road that followed the coast pretty much all the way around.

until it turns back up into going through central Cumbria. The sea was incredible. It was like diamond glass water. You could see the Isle of Man. You could see the Hent of Ireland off in the distance. There I drove by interesting infrastructure like nuclear power plants and whatnot and trains. It was super cool. Beautiful drive. Top day. So I drove back to the hotel.

And that was it for my final day. So I crashed and I dinner at the hotel. I ate dinner at the hotel most nights just because it was easy. That's the nice thing about staying in a pub with rooms is you've got a place to eat if above anything else and you've got a place to eat breakfast. So I ate dinner there and packed up. The next day...

That was the end of my week in Cumbria. I drive down to Manchester, return the car, get on the flight and come home. And, uh, so that's my experience of Cumbria in the Lake District now. I haven't been to Cumbria since then. Um, and I'm very excited that, uh, next year I will kind of be in the area. Um, when, um, when, um, I do the Hadrian's Wall Walk.

Hadrian's Wall is bit further north, but Bowness on Solway is sort of what borders the ⁓ northern edge of Cumbria. So I'll see bits of Cumbria and I'll kind of be in general area. So looking forward to being in that area again. And if I have time, maybe I'll see a lake or two that I didn't get to see on this trip because the lakes, they're beautiful.

Let's see what else am I leaving out here? So. I'm leaving out some important bits so. Those are my experiences. Now let's talk about. Let's talk about some geography and some places and some things you should see that ⁓ maybe I didn't see, but want to see. Gives me reasons to go back.

If I do go back, definitely going to go to Dove Cottage for the Wordsworth connection. It's basically making a literary pilgrimage for a lot of people. But also, I think I want to go to Hilltop Farm. Now, that's Beatrix Potter's farmhouse. And so for people who don't know the story, if you saw the movie Miss Potter, they kind of touch on this at the end.

After she became famous, rich and famous from the Beatrix Potter books, the Peter Rabbit books, she dedicated herself to preserving the landscape of the Lake District. And so at first she started buying up farms and keeping them, basically keeping the farmers on the farms. And then she also became an important woman, stock woman to the Herdwick sheep, which are what James Rebanks keeps. And he's, she's a hero to him.

⁓ She's like a saint up in the Lake District for the way she kept the rare breeds going. And so she was critical in the foundation, the early foundations of the National Trust. So the reason so much of the Lake District landscape is protected is because of Beatrix Potter and her using her wealth to kind of make the park a going concern. So I definitely love Hilltop Farm.

which is her farmhouse where she spent the latter half of her life. I'd also like to see the Ruskin Museum, which is the home of the famous Victorian thinker John Ruskin, know, one of the first critics. Everyone loves a critic, right? And then there's also a couple abandoned abbeys I want to see. There's a couple more castles. There aren't a lot of stately homes in Cumbria. There are a few, but there wasn't ever a lot of

wealth in the Lake District. It's always been at the edge of British society economically. The hills were a hard landscape to make a living from, so it's just why sheep were so successful there. These Herdwick sheep which have lineages from Norwegian sheep and can survive in these hardy landscapes. And so it's really been a place where people kind of scrap in existence. And so

There was never a lot of wealth generated there like in other places like say the Cotswolds where they got rich off Cotswold wool or the Yorkshire Dales where they also got rich on wool. you don't want Herdwick wool for anything. You only want to eat Herdwick sheep. yeah, some things, some local food to try when you're there. Definitely have a Cumbria sausage, which is different than sausages elsewhere in England. Have a Kendall mint cake.

which is very famous. Lots of pubs and restaurants to see. I didn't have a single bad meal my entire visit in Cumbria. So lots of good places to eat. What can you do other than visit beautiful places? Well, there's beaches. I mean, there's because there's lakes. You can go sailing.

You can do fell running if you want to run up hills. You can do fun things like do a dry stone wall course where you can learn how to dry stone wall. James Rebanks actually gave us a demonstration of that when we were at the RWI and that was really cool and interesting. can, there's working farms where that are kind of turned into tourist attractions. James kind of shuns to-

turning his farm into a tourist attraction simply because if he was running a tourist attraction he couldn't write and writing is his vocation. Farming is his job and it's his connection to the land but he's always meant to be a writer and so that's what he focuses his time on. Beware the weather changing constantly. It is England after all and it's borders the Irish Sea which can be moody.

I was lucky the entire time we were there, the sun was shining, which summers in the Lake District can be like that, which is why it's so popular for British people to visit. That's the thing, that's one of the points I want to make, that because a lot of Americans don't make this journey that far north, and that's such a remote place, you kind of have, it's a place British people travel for holiday.

place where British people visit when they go on vacation and so you're really only your encounters are going to be with with other British people and so if you really want to get a sense of Britishness and how they vacation and how they holiday then Cumbria and the Lake District is the place to go for that.

Again, in the summer, it's going to be busy. But like I was there in July and but I was there mostly during the week. And so it wasn't that crowded. But then on my last day, when I was driving back from having done the hard not pass and I came through Windermere, which is like the most touristy of the of Lake District cities or towns like

Traffic barely moved as I was going through there I actually took a diversion so I could avoid the traffic like it can get very crowded very quickly because again These places aren't designed to have lots of visitors. So they do have lots of visitors. It takes patience So I I wouldn't necessarily go in the summer again if I could avoid it. I would choose a bumper season The I would not go in the winter

You know, just as I said, I've followed James Rebanks' Twitter postings for years. Winter in the Lake District is hard. It is cold, it is wet, and it stays cold and wet for a big chunk of the winter. It's not like in southern England, like the winter can be pretty pleasant. It's a lot warmer than winters are here in the US. It can be wet, but for the most part things stay green and the weather is kind of mild. They don't get extreme cold in Britain, but

In Cumbria, they can't get that extreme cold and they do get snow, especially at the top of the mountains and fells. So I wouldn't go in the winter. Go in the shoulder seasons.

If you do go in the summer though, you get the benefit because it's so far north. the sun doesn't set to like 11 p.m. in the summer. Like it was so weird. Like we had these author events that would go to like 11 o'clock and there was still like this twilight at 11 p.m. It was so cool. Also made it hard to sleep though. So it's kind of like going to, you know, to like Norway or Scandinavia in the summer.

or like in the winter when it's daylight all day, like it's daylight, like, it's too much. yeah, that's, if you wanna kind of pre-prepare culturally for the Lake District, there are a couple books about Lake District culture that I'll share in the show notes, but read William Wordsworth, read Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read Robert Southey, read Beatrix Potter. She,

She was inspired by the landscape. I mean because that's where her family holidayed and what inspired her to write Peter Rabbit so You know, and if you're gonna be in the Lake District you want to be outside So, you know plan it so that you can go for a walk Go for a hike. I'm not saying you have to climb scaffold Pike But do what I did go do the Air Force walk where you get to go see a pretty waterfall you go through a valley And you're done after an hour

There's also, most of the lakes will have public footpaths that go all the way around them. So like Ullswater, I think it's like eight or nine miles long, but there's like a 25 mile walk that goes around the lake and you can do that. If you're, if you're lazy and on a ship like me, maybe do it in two days or three days or do what a lot of people do, which is they take the boat part of the way, walk part of the way and then take the boat back. So.

Also something I really want to see next time is Via Ferrata which is at the Hannister Slate Mine and Cumbria used to be known for its slate. Its slate is on the roofs of thousands and upon thousands of buildings in Britain, but slate's un-economical now to mine in Britain, so but the slate mine's still there and you can still, if you want to buy true Lake District slate, can. They have a gift shop, so you can buy a cheese board made of slate if you would like.

So I would say to wrap this up that Cumbria and the Lake District should definitely be on the radar for American tourists. My fellow Americans go to Cumbria and the Lake District. It's beautiful, it's remote, and if you really want to get a sense of place, read the books I mentioned, English Pastoral,

or the shepherd's life, give you kind of a taste of what life is like there. It's one of the best weeks of my life I've spent in Britain. I would love to go again, plan to go again. Definitely want to go back with my wife because I think she would really like it. It's just, it's one of those things where even when you go for a drive through the lakes,

like every turn of the road is like the most beautiful place you've ever seen. So until I had driven in Scotland later on, you know, I had just had no idea how incredibly beautiful England and Britain's mountain landscapes can be. I just never thought about it because I'm a flat midwesterner and one of the things I've always loved about England is how hilly it is, but

It's more than hilly. There are mountains and the mountains are beautiful and they are worth seeing and it's worth going out of your way to go there. So if you can book your own trip up to Cumbria Lake District, I highly recommend it. I don't feel like I can really do it justice in one hour. So if you have any questions about Cumbria Lake District, I'm happy to answer them. And I'm also happy to refer you to more prominent sources who

can help you plan a trip there. So with that, if you enjoyed the Anglotopia podcast, please subscribe, like us, or leave a comment. Please join the Friends of Anglotopia Club where you can support great long form writing about British travel history and culture. And we hope to see you next time. Thank you very much.