Ruth's birthday 2025

3-4 January 2025

We did that thing we’ve done a few times now of having an overnight stay in London and going to a show of Ruth’s choice. This time, she chose the long-running Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap, probably from curiosity at its having been knocking around in the West End for so long, which I’d guess is the reason most people go and see it. We booked an overnight stay at the Hub by Premier Inn Covent Garden, and dinner beforehand at the cellar wine bar The Cork & Bottle – a gem of a place that we’ve now been to two or three times.

With this journey in mind, Ruth had recently renewed our Two Together Railcard. I don't currently take trains as much as I used to, but these are useful to have, enabling Ruth and me to get a third off the price of journeys we take together. Ruth was particularly pleased to change the photo she had in last year’s card. The pair of us did look a bit mugshotty. This year’s pictures are definitely better. Well, I think so.

Last year's railcard

The pictures on last year's railcard reminded me of a photo on a library card I had while a student that Dad said made me look like a member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Looking back, I had a number of cards from that era, and can't now say for sure which one it was, but it might have been this one. I didn’t really know who the BMG were but I seem to remember taking it as a vague compliment, though I’m not sure whether that was what he intended.

Also: best not to ponder photographs of yourself from c. thirty years ago, as I now realise having looked at that photo.

Our renewed railcard

Felt very high-tech managing to get both my theatre ticket AND our train tickets into my Google Wallet – no old-fashioned bits of paper for me on this trip. Ruth has been doing the electronic train ticket thing for a while but I haven’t really dabbled with it up until now, probably due to mild paranoia at the unlikely-but-possible prospect of my phone’s battery dying. Of course, it’s also possible to lose a paper ticket, which I certainly remember doing on one occasion.

Before dinner we went for a bit of a stroll around the Covent Garden/Bloomsbury area - Ruth had had a notion of popping in to the British Museum but we were put off by the enormous queue. Dinner was lovely, and as previously, we admired this mammoth wine bottle. There's probably a name for a wine bottle of that size, but neither of us knew it. I had crab and prawn linguine; Ruth had a steak. Definitely a special occasion restaurant. The white wine I tried - the Viognier shown on the bill - was delicious.

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

The mammoth wine bottle

St Martin's Theatre

The Mousetrap started out as a radio play called Three Blind Mice, apparently written for Queen Mary’s 80th birthday in 1947. It has been playing on the London stage since 1952, and at its current theatre (St Martin’s) since 1974. Ruth could have got the performance number stamped in her programme, but after the play we were funnelled out directly onto the street, bypassing the foyer, and she decided she couldn’t be arsed to go back in again.

Before curtain up

The above photo was taken while we were waiting for kick off. I am not someone who keeps their phone switched on during theatre performances, although there are people who do this and they should of course be swiftly ejected and booted down the street for doing so.

I enjoyed the play (though not the cramped seating – this is common in old London theatres but does make me assume people were smaller in the olden days). I have only ever read one of Christie’s novels, more through not having got around to it than from any distaste for the idea. Dad has a large collection of Christie novels that belonged to his mother. The one I’ve read was 4:50 from Paddington, which I remember thinking a bit meh. No idea whether it’s considered one of her better ones. 

The Mousetrap is set in a country guesthouse that’s recently been taken over by a young couple; a motley crew of guests arrives, and it goes from there. In addition to the inevitable murders, it has a reasonably gritty theme (child abuse). In terms of whodunnit, there's a tradition that anyone who goes to see the play is supposed to remain schtum about the twist towards the end: after curtain call, a member of the cast steps forward and tells the audience never to reveal the secret of The Mousetrap. I had, as it happened, correctly guessed which one of the characters it was who was not quite who they seemed.

Walking back to the hotel after the play

It was my second time staying in one of Premier Inn's 'Hub' hotels, after a solo stay in the Soho hotel in 2021. The Covent Garden hotel on St Martins Lane is wonderfully placed for any theatre activity, and priced accordingly. The 'Hubs' have tiny rooms, most of which is the bed. There's no room for any tea and coffee-making facilities, but you can get free hot drinks from the hotel bar/restaurant.

We could have got a continental breakfast at the hotel the following morning but decided we fancied something in the cooked line. We ended up at Ristorante Roma on Irving Street, one of a line of restaurants behind the National Gallery. Italian restaurants in London often seem to do breakfast and they always have good coffee, as this one did. They sat us outside, which I was initially sceptical about given that it was early January and quite cold. However, we were seated in a covered area next to an outdoor heater and they gave us a blanket each, and it ended up being nicer than sitting in the dark interior, although a number of lightweights who arrived after us did request to be seated indoors.

Ristorante Roma

Blanket supplied

Celebrations of Ruth’s birthday over the past few years:

2024: London day trip. We went to the Red Eight Gallery in the Royal Exchange building to see a collection of Hannah’s paintings that were temporarily being exhibited there. Then for lunch at Larry’s in the basement of the National Portrait Gallery. Ruth had a bacon roll that was so posh it was barely recognizable as one such. I can’t remember what I had but I think it was some sort of artsy Ploughman’s.

Hannah's paintings

Extremely fancy bacon roll

2023: Oxford day trip to see an exhibition at the Bodleian of photos and other bits and pieces from the Tutankhamun dig. Then later for dinner at the London Street Brasserie in Reading.

2022: Cabaret! At the Playhouse Theatre, fully decked out as the Kit Kat Club. With the ORIGINAL LEADS, Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne. I am not a huge fan of musical theatre so Ruth normally refrains from picking it for a joint theatre trip, but she is a big fan of the 1972 film and felt she couldn’t pass up the chance of seeing this stage version while it still had its original cast. In fairness, it was very well done and I was glad to have seen it. I wasn’t familiar with Buckley but she has a belter of a voice. It was apparently Redmayne’s musical theatre debut. This London Theatre piece notes that they both won Olivier Awards for their performances. We stayed at the Premier Inn London Waterloo, part of which is a former lying-in hospital.

The Playhouse, done up as the Kit Kat Club

2021: from looking back, nothing – we would still have been under the newly-invented ‘Tier 4’ restrictions that had prevented me travelling to Mum and Dad’s for Christmas a few weeks earlier.

2020: The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. Trip already blogged about here. We had dinner beforehand at the Cork & Bottle then too and almost lost our table through failing to spot the entrance to the restaurant (it's got two, and we'd been in via the Bear Street entrance previously).

Previous dinner at The Cork & Bottle

2019: Circus 1903 at the Royal Festival Hall. Stayed at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge. Mentioned here.

2018: in Wales. Windy walk up Blorenge and then afternoon tea at The Angel in Abergavenny. This was one of a couple of hill walks in 2018 that resulted in my decision later that year to take up running.

In 2017: This House, a political play, at the Garrick Theatre. Mentioned in this post. We ate at the Cork & Bottle before that one too.

We've been together a few years longer than that but that'll probably do.

Duolingo postscript

As I've noted before, if you don’t turn off push notifications, Duolingo pings you relentlessly to do your daily practice and bombards you with passive-aggressive messaging.

Am expecting a "You've Let Yourself Down" any day now.

I could, of course, disable the notifications, but I've been observing them for research purposes. I additionally installed the widget, which changes throughout the day according to how long you let things go on without doing your daily session, as per a few days ago:

Monday at 2pm

2:50pm

5pm

5:50pm

7:15pm

7:40pm: happy Duo. I cracked and practised.

A day or so later, I rashly let it go even later into the evening:

9pm

And in fact then forgot to do my practice, with the result that I awoke to this 'frozen wastes' image:

Plenty of people seem to have reported feeling vaguely threatened by the Duolingo owl, e.g. this Mashable piece that begins "The Duolingo owl is ruining my life". There seem to have been some panicked responses to this 2019 tweet, including "Is the Duo owl coming to kill me in my sleep?" and "Please stop I'll do anything I'll even learn Spanish".

Duolingo and other language-learning

Over the past few months I’ve restarted language learning via Duolingo – which, judging by this recent email congratulating me on my 8th Duoversary, I joined eight years ago. I haven’t actually been actively using the app for anything like that length of time: I assume I used it when I first signed up for it in January 2017, and then again briefly during the COVID lockdown, but then had tailed off until a few months ago, spurred back to it by Mum, Hannah and Nia all using it and adding me as a friend, and partly with the idea that it would be good brain activity. I have no idea whether the latter is really true or not, but it is quite fun. It’s easy to use and has a pleasant interface, though I have recently been suckered into paying for ‘Super’ Duolingo to get rid of the annoying ads. Once you’ve done that, though, it then tries to sell you Duolingo Max. IT WILL NEVER END.
 

I’ve tried out a few languages, but German is the one I’ve given most time to so far. A typical lesson includes written sentences to translate (in both directions), German sentences to speak yourself, spoken German sentences to translate into English, usually from a supplied pool of words, and ‘matching’ exercises where you match an English word to its German equivalent.

You can complete quests with your Duolingo ‘friends’, and are moved up and down through various leagues. In addition to languages, I’ve also recently had a go at Music, through curiosity to see what exactly they could offer in this area: it’s essentially some exercises teaching you the position of the notes on a keyboard, and to read music. It’s stuff I already know from learning the piano years ago, but is quite good as far as it goes.

Among the German sentences I’ve been presented with that I don’t foresee myself actually ever needing to use are the following:

I don’t live alone, I have a fish.
My cat runs every day without gym shoes.
I don’t love you, I only love mayonnaise.
Why is a cucumber in the living room?
Can you please buy ninety-nine carrots?
Oscar, are you picking up the turtle?

In reality I've never made serious efforts to become fluent in another language, though post-school I have done a few language classes over the years, all of them some time ago now. At school I missed out on studying German, due to changing schools at the wrong time and it evidently being thought that it would be too much for me to try and catch up with my year group - though I like to think I probably could have done. Perhaps this explains my keenness to have a go at it in adult life. I've also done evening classes in both Spanish and Dutch at various times. French was the only modern language I studied at school. I was fairly good at it, getting an A in my O-level plus my year's O-level French Prize. I did go on to take A-level French but went off it substantially at that stage, mainly because of the literature-heavy course. No idea whether A-level modern language courses are still like this. Probably.

Digressing a bit: for school prizes we had to choose a book (none of that Amazon gift card malarkey in our day), which then got a label stuck inside it before it was presented to us on Speech Day, as per above. The book I chose was William Horwood's Duncton Wood, a fantasy novel involving moles. I still have the book, though it's consigned to the attic. Looking at the back cover, I imagine I would have been swayed at the time by Magnus Magnusson's mention of both The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down, as I read and very much enjoyed both of those books in my teens. I don't think I ever got more than a few chapters in to DW, though Hannah pinched it and read it - in fact we reminisced briefly at Christmas about it and the character names we could remember. According to Wikipedia, Duncton Wood ended up being part of a six-volume series. Horwood must have felt the moles had legs.

Some books I've read (relatively) recently

A few books I’ve finished over the past few months. All these were books we read in Book Group.

'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi

Subtitled ‘What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death’. An end of life memoir by American neurosurgeon Kalanithi, who died of lung cancer in 2015 at the age of 37.

Kalanithi’s parents were immigrants from India, who settled initially in New York City before moving to Arizona. Helped by an academically ambitious mother, he got into Stanford where he completed degrees in English literature and human biology. His decision to apply for medical school came while completing a subsequent masters in English literature. While waiting for the medical school application cycle to go through, he applied for and took a degree in the history and philosophy of science and medicine at Cambridge. After this, he started studies at Yale School of Medicine. The man was clearly a born student though I did find myself wondering quite how many years in total he’d spent in college.

Kalanithi’s cancer developed while he was still in residency – which I loosely understand as meaning you’ve left medical school but are still in training. He was in his final of six years as a neurosurgical resident and anticipating graduating at the end of the year. He was thirty-six at this point and married to Lucy, also a doctor. Kalanithi himself suspects that he has cancer “and not the good kind” before it is officially diagnosed. From the CT scans, he is able to spot himself what it is, and that it has already spread.

The second half of the book is Kalanithi’s reflections post-diagnosis, including on the switch to experiencing medicine from a patient perspective. He notes the passing from subject to object, and the becoming a person to whom things happened. There are some reflections on religion and a turning back towards Christianity, probably understandable from a man facing a premature death. I liked that he doesn’t claim to have had epiphanies through having cancer:

Severe illness wasn’t life-altering, it was life-shattering. It felt less like an epiphany – a piercing burst of light, illuminating What Really Matters – and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward.

Towards the end of the book, his reflections on tense are interesting: what tense is he living in now? Should he say “I am a neurosurgeon”, or, knowing that he will never return to duties, “I was a neurosurgeon”? What should he say when friends say that they will see him at some future event? The book ends with some words directed at his baby daughter Cady, who we learn from his wife’s epilogue was eight months old when he dies. Paul’s manuscript, written during the last year of his life, was unfinished, derailed by his rapid decline and death. The epilogue provides context and a concluding chapter to Paul’s story. (The foreword, written by a fellow doctor and author, is turgid – I think if I’d read that first, as I never do, it might just have put me off reading the book.)

This obituary in Stanford Medicine includes a video recording of Kalanithi talking about his diagnosis.

'Hamnet' by Maggie O'Farrell

I read (and enjoyed) this on Mum’s recommendation. It’s a fictionalised account of the childhoods and married life of William Shakespeare (henceforth WS) and his wife, called here Agnes. It’s set in Stratford in the late 16th century and framed (loosely) around the couple’s son, Hamnet, and on his parents' grief following his death.

Hamnet is eleven and has two sisters and lives with his parents on Henley Street, Stratford, next door to his grandparents’ house, where his grandfather John runs a glove-making business. The book opens with Hamnet trying to find medical help for his twin sister Judith, who has been taken ill. Judith has a fever and has developed ‘buboes’ – pale oval swellings under the skin. Hamnet’s mother has a reputation for being able to cure anything with her potions, but struggles to cure this one. In a twist, Judith recovers, but Hamnet falls ill with the plague and dies.

Hamnet’s mother Agnes tends a patch of land at the farm where she grew up. Local legend has it that Agnes’ mother emerged from the forest that bordered the farm, bewitching the farmer, who married her. Local people say that Agnes is a forest sprite and a sorceress. Hamnet’s father met Agnes when he was sent there to tutor the farmer’s sons in Latin. Agnes becomes pregnant, they marry and move in next door to WS' parents in Stratford. In due course, Agnes comes up with the idea of getting her husband to go away to London to find work, with a view to getting him away from his brute of a father; she would then follow him at a later date, with the children. WS’ father John is persuaded that it would be a good idea to expand the glove business to London; in the event, WS does make a great success of working in London, but as a writer leading a touring company of players, rather than in the glove business. WS spends more and more of his time in London, only returning home intermittently. O'Farrell explores Agnes' grief following Hamnet's death, and the shared understanding between the women - Agnes and her mother-in-law Mary have always had a fractious relationship, but both have lost a child, as very many women must have done then. In this fictionalised account, Agnes travels to London to seek her husband, and ends up at the opening performance of his new play, Hamlet.

In an Author’s Note, O’Farrell notes that only a limited amount is known about the Shakespeare family. The names of Shakespeare’s three children are known, and it is known that the boy, Hamnet, died young, but the cause of his death is not known. Having him die from bubonic plague in the novel is a fiction of O’Farrell’s, influenced, she says, by the apparent absence of any mention of the disease in any of Shakespeare’s literary output – her implication being, presumably, that this is odd given the time period in which they were written.

The suggestion in the novel is that WS named his play Hamlet after his deceased son. O’Farrell notes "Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries" and cites this 2004 article The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet in the New York Review of Books.

Hamnet was published in 2020 and was O'Farrell's eighth novel.

'The Guest' by Emma Cline

Ruth’s choice for our November Book Group book. We read Cline’s first novel The Girls in 2018 and I thought that was well written and atmospheric.

The story opens with a young woman, Alex, swimming in the sea off a beach somewhere “out east” from New York City – we don’t know where, exactly, but it’s somewhere where rich people have second homes. She is there with her older boyfriend, Simon, who invited her there for the summer to amuse herself while he’s working and then to go to parties with him in the evenings. Alex is 22, Simon in his fifties.

It quickly becomes clear that Alex has got herself into a bit of a mess back in NYC – she seems to routinely pilfer other people’s painkilling (and possibly other) medication, she has run up bills on various men’s credit cards, restaurants and nightspots have blacklisted her, her flatmates have thrown her out for non-payment of rent (and pilfering their meds). What she does for a living is not entirely clear but she appears to be some kind of escort, though work has tailed off and she’s had to reduce her rates. We never discover anything about her background or why she is in the position of doing this kind of work. She’s being persistently chased, via voicemail and text, by an ex, Dom, from whose apartment she has stolen drugs and cash.

One evening Alex and Simon attend a party at the home of an acquaintance of Simon’s, where Alex gets drunk and makes up to the hostess’ younger husband, whom she teases to throw her into the swimming pool, which he does. Simon takes exception to this sort of behaviour – and to the fact that Alex dented his car the previous day and didn’t tell him – and buys Alex a train ticket back to the city, suggesting that they talk “in a week or so”. Alex manages to convince herself that Simon doesn’t actually want rid of her but just wants a few days’ space, and decides not to return to the city but to find a way to stay in the area for a few days, planning to surprise Simon by returning to his house on the evening of his upcoming Labor Day party. By then, Alex imagines, Simon will have calmed down and be pleased to see her again. Alex proceeds to inveigle herself into various other houses in the area via making up to a series of complete strangers. In the book’s final scene Alex does, indeed, present herself at Simon’s party as she planned, fresh from the scene of a car crash driven by a troubled teenager she seduced.

Discussing this book, Ali mooted the idea that the ending and the final single-word sentence “Now.” might indicate Alex's death from injuries suffered in the car crash, but that would be too unsubtle a device for Cline, who commendably avoids melodrama, both here and in The Girls. It's enough that Alex has now burned all her bridges, even throwing away her mobile phone on her way to Simon’s, and is now faced with the dawning realization that she has hideously miscalculated.

What is this fascination Alex has with people’s swimming pools? I did wonder whether there was some symbolism being used in the form of the various pools, and of water generally. Early in the story Alex gets carried further out to sea than she intends while floating on her back and manages to rescue herself by swimming parallel to the shore until the current becomes less strong and she is able to return to land. Towards the end of the story, when things are unravelling, there is another incident when sea swimming, but this time Alex mis-times a wave and is thrown to the sand underwater, cutting herself. Early in the story the swimming pools Alex encounters are pristine, well cared for; as the story progresses, one pool is “a little gray”; “the dirty pool, the water probably half beer at this point”; the final pool she encounters is unheated and freezing, the water dirty, “biscuit-colored foam floated on the surface, visible grit settled on the pool’s bottom”. This Guardian review of The Guest does indeed have it that water is used as a leitmotif. So there.

The Guest was published in 2023 and was Cline's second novel.

Recollections of last year's Lakes trip, before this year's Lakes trip

25 March to 1 April 2023

Trip with Ray to the Lakes in 2023.

Where we stayed

Loughrigg Brow, a large 19th-century house on Under Loughrigg, a narrow winding road that runs alongside the river Rothay to the north of Ambleside. We stayed in the Windermere Suite, one of the second floor flats. The whole house is divided into flats, a number of which are probably holiday rentals. The house contains a lift, for use by the flat owners only. There was a note in the flat about the lift, to the effect that it's proved a complete money pit, breaks down constantly and that basically no one should use it.

We booked the property through Heart of the Lakes, which appears now to be trading as Lakelovers, with whom we have booked our upcoming stay in Ambleside starting tomorrow.

It was a very pleasant flat with a lovely sitting room. The only downside of the flat was the pervasive smell of drains in the ensuite to the twin bedroom, which persisted for the whole week despite my repeatedly chucking boiling water down the bathroom sink as per the instructions in the flat. I had generously persuaded Ray to have the king size bedroom, mainly because the ensuite to that had a bath and he doesn’t have a bath on his boat, and I know he enjoys a bath.

It was an excellent location – Ambleside was a pleasant walk down through the grounds and across Rothay Park; the only downside was the steep walk back up the drive on the way back.

Anticipation!

Loughrigg Brow

First evening

On arrival, we had a poke about the grounds and initially noted that some tree-felling appeared to have been done, before it dawned on us that an awful lot of tree-felling had been done and that the trees appeared to be lying in a more haphazard manner than might be expected had they been deliberately felled. On returning to the flat, I discovered a handwritten note from the owners that we hadn’t spotted initially, noting that the grounds had been devastated by Storm Arwen in late 2021. I didn’t remember the online entry for the property pointing this out – not saying it would necessarily have put me off booking but I had noted the 10 acres of grounds as a plus point, and in practice strolls around the grounds were restricted by the need to constantly shimmy over large tree trunks.

We also lugged our Sainsburys delivery up two flights of stairs. Not to be recommended.

The grounds

Fallen trees

We did walks on all the days except Day 3, which was very wet – though we also got pretty soaked on Day 4. At this time I was still using MapMyWalk to track walks – have now switched to using Strava via my Garmin Forerunner – and couldn’t figure out how to get MMW not to put the annoying mile markers on the map, and also never figured out why it would show part of the route in black. I’ve shared the stats from MMW at the top of each day’s entry.

Day 1: Rothay Circuit out of Buttle

A lovely circuit of Rydal Water and Grasmere. Route taken from Paul Buttle’s 15 Walks from Ambleside and Grasmere, which we found in the flat.

Setting off on the path that leads to Rydal Hall

Rydal Water from the Coffin Route

Grasmere from our lunch viewpoint

The route

Day 2: Wansfell Pike and Troutbeck

This was the sunniest day of the week. The ascent of Wansfell Pike from Ambleside is quite steep but not scrambly, so I was determined to nail it in an assertive fashion.

On the way up. In typical fashion, Ray had got chatting to someone

Me atop Wansfell Pike

Wainwright does point out that the ‘rocky bluff’ of Wansfell Pike is not actually the true summit of Wansfell. The true summit is a bit of an extra walk away to the NE. At 1597 to W. Pike’s 1581, we weren’t sufficiently bothered about the extra sixteen feet of height to bother walking over to it; plus it looked a bit underwhelming, whereas the views from the Pike are great. (Wainwright does indeed note that the lower Wansfell Pike is a better viewpoint.)

After reaching the summit of Wansfell, we descended its other side down into Troutbeck, where I think we sat on a bench for a bit having something from a café there.

Roadside well in Troutbeck

We walked back from Troutbeck to Ambleside via Robin Lane and later Skelghyll Woods.

Following the path to High Skelghyll Farm

Mossy wall in Skelghyll Woods

These gates again. They intrigue me. Can't find any existing house called Skelgarth.

Back in Ambleside we went for a cream tea at the Apple Pie Café.

Our route:

Day 3: Stock Ghyll Force and Ambleside

It was raining and looked set in for the day. We walked up to Stock Ghyll Force, a waterfall just up behind Ambleside, and then had lunch in a large pub near the main car park. I forget its name but I daresay we might go there again on the upcoming trip.

Looking a bit damp

Rain drove us inside

Day 4: bus to Coniston and circular walk

Extremely wet walk, we got lost at one point and almost missed the bus back due to waiting on the wrong side of the road.

Sticking in a purist fashion to our resolve not to drive in the Lakes once we were there, we took the Stagecoach 505 bus service that goes from the Ambleside bus interchange to the Crown at Coniston. I can’t remember how long the journey took, probably 40 minutes or so what with that stopping thing that buses do.

The Crown at Coniston

As the photos suggest, this was a grey day. On arrival we headed for the lake shore and walked along the lake southwards for a bit, passing Torver jetty where I think we stopped for a snack. We then headed inland across Torver Common to the road. Close to the road we passed the old trackbed of the Coniston Railway, which excited Ray mightily.

Coniston shore

Torver jetty

The old railway trackbed

We probably would have been better to follow the ‘Coniston Avoiding Road’ path back to Coniston village, but instead, to make it a longer walk, we crossed the road and headed up a footpath leading on to higher ground. This involved some very muddy paths and generally boggy ground. We ate our picnic near Torver Beck, which was looking pretty lively, and set out to walk back in the direction of Coniston – which we did eventually manage to do, but had quite a bit of difficulty discerning anything that could be called a path. Just as I was deciding I didn't relish the thought of being out there after dark, Ray decided on a direction and tramped off determinedly, and it did turn out to be the one we needed as we eventually did join a more discernible path.

Muddy path

Torver Beck

Bit lost at this point

Shortly after this wet wall picture, I seem to remember my phone decided it was too wet to continue, hence no further pictures. That probably also explains the straight section on the route map.

The horrible "stile"

We did, thankfully manage to catch the bus back to Ambleside. Our route below:

Day 5: Loughrigg Fell including summit of Loughrigg

This was a walk out of the useful little ‘Low Fells’ book that I’d purchased on our previous Lakes visit in 2020 and, annoyingly, can't now find - reaching the conclusion that I must have left it at Loughrigg Brow. This walk started by walking north along Under Loughrigg towards the A591, then taking the path that leads alongside Rydal Water and ascends towards Loughrigg Terrace. From Loughrigg Terrace you ascend onto the top of the fell.

Walking up Under Loughrigg towards Pelter Bridge

Grasmere from Loughrigg Terrace

A Wainwright book in the flat referred to Loughrigg Fell as “a sprawling, ill-shaped wedge” and as “having a bulk out of all proportion to its modest altitude”. It’s enough to give it body dysmorphia. I wouldn’t quite agree that “no ascent” is involved, but I agree it’s not much in the grand scheme of things. In fairness, Wainwright does concede further down the page that “Everybody likes Loughrigg”.

Heading up onto Loughrigg

The summit

On top of the fell

I can’t remember too much about the latter stages of this walk – the loop in the bottom right of the map below is reminding me that I think we went slightly off route at one point, before getting back on track, no doubt helped by this helpful sign in the wall at one point.

Old golf course possibly around here somewhere

On the way back down we passed a posh-looking house called Pine Rigg. Interestingly, this seems to have been built on the site of a former golf clubhouse.

Wainwright's map showing the road down off Loughrigg

Coming down the lane back to Loughrigg Brow (centre of picture)

Our route:

Day 6: bus to Elterwater and walk back

We took a bus to the village of Elterwater and walked past the lake and along the river Brathay to Skelwith Bridge. From there we followed a path up through a lodge park up onto Loughrigg Fell again and ate lunch by Loughrigg Tarn. Then across the fell and back to Ambleside. Ray had a bit more of a hunt around for the old golf course.

River Brathay above Skelwith Force

Ray down on the viewing platform at Skelwith Force

Loughrigg Tarn

Following a bridleway across Loughrigg Fell

Maybe a tee for the old golf course?

Route of the walk:

We went out in the evening for dinner at the Jintana Thai restaurant in Ambleside.

Last night dinner

Postscript

This was a lovely week. All the days except the Wansfell day were varying shades of grey and dampness, but it didn’t dampen my enjoyment much. The pic below was taken from the sitting room of the Windermere Suite. We had another quick circuit of the grounds and inspection of the tree carnage before setting off home.

Ambleside with Wansfell behind