Bucket List Experience

Super fit L runs 5k on Friday morning, I don’t. 

Daughter departs for skiing in Bulgaria which is her first ski trip in about 15 years. Then we transfer my Dad to my brother’s house and head off to the Lakes. Originally, he was supposed to come with us but clearly that’s no longer possible. We were also supposed to be having some friends staying with us but they've been called away to see his estranged brother who has been given weeks to live. 

With all the doom and gloom of the assorted health problem of family and friends we settle in our too big for the two of us cottage and head down to the Wainwrights where the Settle Plum Porter at 5.3% isn’t too bad a way to start the weekend. 

As high winds whistle around the cottage it becomes apparent that all the local Parkruns are going to be off. In fact, the nearest one to be on is in Ulveston. I offer to drive us but instead we decide to chill in bed as it would be an hour’s drive. 

We do our own run instead, running 5.8k around Chapel Stile and Elterwater followed by lunch on the go from the Co-op as Slates café is frustratingly closed. We do a walk to Skelwith and Colwith before a beer stop in the Eltermere Inn for a Bowness Bay Swan Black at 4.6%. We eat in Lanty Slees in the evening while trying their own gin and whiskey with more Swan Black. 

We repeat the same running route on Sunday but extend it down to the Sticklebarn which has now been rebranded Lanty Slee’s Langdale for breakfast which is just a breakfast roll as sadly they don’t do a full English. It’s also a shame about the name change and I’m not sure it will stick. 

Then, as it's already lunchtime, we have a lunchtime Old Peculier in the Old Dungeon Ghyll for old time’s sake. It never changes in there and they’ve had the same chap on the bar for twenty years. Then L has a bucket list experience as we get the local bus back to the cottage as it’s now raining. We are back in the Wainwrights later. 

We would normally conclude a trip to the Lakes with a visit to the Hawkshead Brewery’s brewhall in Staveley but this has now closed and the brewery has moved to Flooksburgh in the south of Cumbria. There is good news though. Some local people are in the process of buying the Jennings Brewery back off Marston’s and are going to reopen it. 

Instead, we go for breakfast at the Force Cafe in Ambleside that we didn’t know existed, down a road we didn’t know existed. Then on the way home we drop my brother’s daughter’s passport to her at Lancaster Uni.

(Monday 27^th January)