World Class Scenery

We left our Aston Marina buddies on Friday afternoon and headed off back towards the marina ... but via the Lake District where we were going to stop over for a couple of nights.

We farewelled the very pretty local farmhouse pheasant ...

We consulted our Brit Stop book and found a motorhome friendly pub at Cockermouth.

As soon as we parked up the Landlord came out and welcomed us, the pub didn't open till 18.30 so we relaxed in our motorhome 'till then ...

It was a pretty nondescript looking pub on the outside ...

Our view from the 'side hatch' !!

... but very different on the inside, the whole place was adorned with teapots!

The idea of the Brit Stop book is that you park in the pub car park or farm shop etc. and hopefully (for them) you spend some of your hard-earned, although, as it says in the book, you are under no obligation to spend a cent.  Obviously we are not like that and you don't have to twist our arms to have a drink. This landlord, however, was very pushy and assumed we were having dinner there and got a bit shirty when we told him that we were only having a couple of pints.  There was nothing we really fancied off his menu and the prices were in my opinion a bit exy for basic pub grub.

Never mind we slept well with a clear conscience, having consumed a couple of pints.

I took the dogs for a Saturday morning walk and introduced them to some locals ...

We headed towards Keswick along some narrow lanes, we even had a few snow showers ...

There was a cross country race going on so we had to be a bit careful ...

The problem was the narrow roads got so narrow that we were too wide so had to chuck a u-ey!  It's times like this that I am so glad we are not towing a caravan.

After all that excitement we decided to stop in a layby for lunch.  I took the boys for a walk and took some pics ...

We then headed towards Windermere where we parked up in a proper site as we needed power, plus wanted to empty the cassettes and fill up with water.

We went for a walk around the lake and were blown away by the world class scenery.  This is one of the reasons we wanted to buy a motorhome, to be able to sightsee these fantastic sights away from the canals ...

Now onto one of my favourite subjects ... the dog-friendly Brit businesses!  This sign was outside a Cafe, where dogs were allowed inside ... love it.

Then down to lake cruise boats.....dogs travel free.....double love it.  I hate to bang on about it but I will ... there is no way this would be allowed back in Oz!  Dogs travelling free on the boats ... they wouldn't be allowed on the bloody boats.  If we do go back to Oz we will be on a mission to try and find out the reasons for the anti-dog behaviour and get it changed!

On our way back to the motorhome we spotted a few narrowboats (with masts) ... but look at the snow-capped mountains in the background ... you don't see that often !

Tomorrow we will head back to the marina.