Lake District

Summer in UK is over. It is no longer bright from 5am till 9.30pm. We turned on the heater at 4.30pm yesterday. For some deluded reason I’ve expected the cold weather will not hit us so fast, but luckily the heating system in this house is pretty efficient.

The Brits celebrate the last weekend of summer with a bank holiday and not wanting to be left out of the mad dash to all places near and far we spent it in Lake District.

It was a good 3 hours drive from Birmingham - around 160Miles - drivinng at 80mph on the M6 we were still lagging behind the zany british motorists. We headed off at 6.30am to avoid traffic - a cunning plan that paid off. According to Sally, all brits and their dogs head off to the country side on long weekends.

We reached the New Dungeon Ghyll Hotel at approximately 10.15am. Matt and I had a cuppa and to Matt's delight, they used FULL CREAM milk to make his Cappucino. While waiting to check in at 2pm, Matt and I decided to take a walk up those Fells behind the hotel. So armed with half a bottle of water, a running-out-of-battery camera and a £2 map we started our journey.

Everytime serious hikers with backpacks, camping gear, climbing robes and walking stick followed us, we paused and pretended to take picture while secretly catching our breath and let them pass.

The camera ran out of battery pretty much 10 minutes into our journey so we can't show you the majestic climb we achieved. A very good excuse you might say... but that's God's intention. (I have decided to use the name of the Almighty more often now since I started scanning lots of devoted muslim these days, and they won't argue with me when I say I can't gurantee the sex of their babies; only God give gurantees.)

Anyway, after almost an hour walked, we decided to turn back as the ground plants got thicker and we were getting hungry and exhausted. My legs were pretty wobbly when I reached the road.

There was still 1 1/2 hour before we can checked into the room so we drove around a bit in the hope to find a romantic cruise lunch somewhere, but we had little idea of what we were doing, we did however managed to take a 5 minutes ferry across a lake but the town was just filled with tourists and cars so we decided to head back to the hotel for lunch. We collapsed in our room for the afternoon and braved for another short walk in the evening.

There is a million interesting things to do in Lake District. One would imagine to spend at least a good month to have cover half of the activities offered. After a good debate, we decided to visit the Honister Slate Mine.

We set out about 9.30am after breakfast. Following our trusted Tom-Tom's advice we drove through what seems like endless nerve-biting narrow streets, which at one point even had the bottom of the car scratched loudly while trying to give way to the on-coming vehicle, we arrived at Keswick at approximately 11am. We parked at the foot of the hill and found the tourist information centre which we were told the mine is about 1+ miles up hill. Mr. Moran decided it was a good idea for us to 'just' walk up to the mine.

As you notice from the photo, that one mile or so walk was on a mostly 25degrees incline and I am still not sure when the lady said the mine is 1 mile up ; whether she meant the mile is a straight line from the foot of the hill to the destination or is it the winding up hill walk?

Car upon car flies past us and Matt refused to stick his finger out to hitch a hike.

We finally gave up hiking what seems like the last 2 inclined on the road and flagged down the bus.

THE ENTRANCE OF THE HONISTER SLATE MINE. HURRAY!

Matt appreciating the picturesque scenary with his much deserved cup of tea before the start of the tour.

Dressing up for the occasion.

Marching up the mine like a real man.

Matt paying attention to the safety instruction, while I'm with the fairies.

And that's the beginning of our adventure.