Emma's excellent and diligent research found us (six adults, three kids) this spacious house in Braithwaite, just down the road from Keswick, and the starting point for our Coledale walk back in the heady pre-kids days of 2008. As with Keswick itself this is an excellent hub for getting to most bits of the Lake District, with the exception of some of the really gnarly remote bits like Wasdale. It was ideal for the three hill/mountain walks described in the earlier post; none of them required a drive of more than half an hour or so. Braithwaite also claims to have three pubs - we'd already visited the Coledale Inn as the finale to our walk in 2008, and revisited it here just to check it was still OK (it is). We also had a pint in the Royal Oak, which is about 2 minutes down the road from the house and has excellent Jennings ale. The third pub must presumably be the Middle Ruddings "country inn and restaurant" which is a few yards down the road in the other direction (i.e. away from the village).
Anyway, places we visited which were not either mountains or pubs during the trip included:
- The Puzzling Place in Keswick - a quaint little place collecting various items grouped around the theme of optical illusions. More Nia's cup of tea than the younger two, to be honest, but they do have an Ames room, which is pretty awesome.
- The World Of Beatrix Potter in Bowness-on-Windermere. Again, probably more Nia's thing than anyone else's, but very well done - lots of multimedia interaction and things to do as well as a "real" Mr MacGregor's garden (i.e. it was outside and had actual plants in it). Certainly a step up from the Peter Rabbit exhibit in Wray Castle that we visited on last year's trip - that one seemed more specifically tailored to people familiar with the TV series, which despite being of American origin is generally fine except for the bizarre driving rock soundtrack they throw in occasionally. Obviously one is required to exit through the gift shop, and obviously Nia persuaded us to buy her a boxed set of Beatrix Potter books, the little minx.
- Whinlatter Forest - we came here last time as well, but it warrants a re-visit as there are lots of trails to explore and they had a different Donaldson/Scheffler-themed thing going on - last time it was The Highway Rat, this time Zog. For what it's worth I prefer Zog as a book, particularly to read out loud. I'd obviously like it noted that I recognise that the structure and metre adopted by The Highway Rat is a homage to Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman, and that's all very clever, but it breaks up the rhythm a bit when you're reading it. Zog also has a nice bit of feminist subversion of fairy-tale tropes at the end, as previously noted here. Zog was also famously read by Queens Of The Stone Age frontman and alleged Donald Trump lookalike Josh Homme in the CBeebies bedtime story slot a while back. Apparently a couple of other stories were filmed but have now been indefinitely shelved following some stereotypical drunken rock pig arseholery whereby Homme injured a female photographer at a gig in Los Angeles in December 2017. Absolutely no attempt will be made by me to excuse this behaviour, but it does illustrate a conflict between a desire to be edgy and ironic and interesting and keep the parents entertained (since clearly most if not all of the kids will have no idea who these people are) and the expectation that the chosen people will be exemplary role models for small children.
I've been experimenting with sharing albums via Google Photos rather than via the old gallery, so this album link can serve as a prototype. Initial testing suggests it works OK but if anyone passes this way and finds that it doesn't, drop me a comment or something.
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