Mother + Country

Last month Johnny's mum paid us a visit, as part of well-deserved miniature World Tour. After a few days getting settled into London (Portobello Road was a favourite) we left the city behind, travelling by train through beautiful countryside before swapping into a hire car to take us deep into the Lake District. As you may remember, we are massive fans of this area, and as Mum had never visited before, we took the opportunity to get back there.

To avoid being too repetitive we tried staying somewhere new - on Bassenthwaite Lake, at the western end of the region.



















By complete and amazing coincidence, we happened to be within walking distance of our ANZAC friends Kristy and Dave, who work at the Pheasant Inn - a highly-recommended pub, by the way - we knew their pub would be nearby but we didn't think it would be that close! We ended up having a quiet pint there before taking Dave the barman's advice and having a nice traditional English evening meal of a curry, at the interesting nearby town of Cockermouth. The following day we took even more of Dave's advice and visited the Jennings Brewery, which was both interesting and quite intoxicating as the visit finished with 3 halves of the ale of your choice. Earlier in the week, Mum had seemed quite surprised how largely the pub figures in English life (admittedly we had gone "down the pub" 5 times in 4 days!) - but now she was right into it, even having a go at pulling a pint!


We then moved to Keswick, our favourite town in the district. Mum is a keen walker so we took plenty of strolls around the hills and lakes, taking particular pleasure in being so "amateur" compared to the people Mum calls "Red-socks" - the serious walkers with all the Gore-Tex, backpacks and special poles. She had a good point; we were doing the same walks as them, none of which was longer than 8 kilometres, but they were equipped like they were tackling Everest and we were in T-shirts. Oh well, whatever makes you happy!



After four days in the Lake District we returned to the Big Smoke refreshed and invigorated. A few days later we saw Mum off for the final leg of her world tour: Kyoto, Japan. Now there's somewhere we definitely can't get a cheap flight to!