Day 1 – Travel to the Lakes

The country had been in Lockdown for Covid and when it started opening back up Boris Johnson announced that family holidays would be allowed from mid April. As the kids would still be on their Easter holidays we booked a cottage in the Lake District for 3 nights so that we could go and do some exploring.

We left home just before 9am for the 4 hour drive to the Lakes. Our cottage was not available till 4pm so we hoped to spend the afternoon doing a walk as the sun was shining. I googled best hikes and found a walk to Loughrigg Fell which supposedly had beautiful views.

Loughrigg

We arrived in the carpark shortly after lunch, ate our sandwiches and headed off on our walk. We thought it was only a short stroll so didn’t wear our hiking boots. We followed the path but somehow went the wrong way and had to double back on ourselves and find the proper trail.

It wasn’t long before we were high enough to have views over Rydal Water.

We carried on and then could see Grasmere Lake.

^{Views of Grasmere Lake}

The climb started to get quite steep and involved a little bit of scrambling and a staircase – although it gave us some brilliant photo opportunities.

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the top – we tried to find the geo-cache but failed before heading back to the car. At one point a helicopter was doing some training exercises which we watched.

We then drove to our holiday cottage which was at Coniston Water where we chilled for the evening.

Day 2 – The Old Man of Coniston and Wast Water

The Old Man of Coniston

We arrived at the car park at about 9am and luckily got one of the last spaces. It was a beautiful morning for our climb and it took up 2.5 hours to reach the summit. Here is our blog on the Old Man of Coniston.

^{The summit of the Old Man of Coniston}

Wast Water

I really wanted to return to Wast Water but it was over an hour away so we let Tom and Izzy stay at home whilst Stu and I ventured over. It was only 30 miles away but all the roads were winding country lanes so it took ages to get there.

We arrived, parked up so we could have a little stroll and take some photos. We tried to recreate a photo we took on our last visit and were lucky to have a beautiful view of Scaefell Pike.

We then returned home (another hour or so) over the Hardknott pass. The views were lovely but we both agreed we probably should not have bothered spending so long driving as we were so tired after our climb!

Day 3 – Ullswater and Hallin Fell

We were not up for a huge walk today so headed over to Ullswater as we knew there was a shortish hike in the area with lovely views.

Ullswater

We arrived at Ullswater and pulled up in a parking space off the main road and found a little path down to the lake. There were loads of rocks in the water so we occupied ourselves for a good half hour playing stepping stones. Tom devised a game where he would throw stones into the water near the rock Stu was standing on to see if he could get him soaked!

Hallin Fell

We then headed over to Hallin Fell, the other side of the Lake. We parked at the church and then hiked up to the top. It is only a half hour hike but is definitely worth it. Tom and Izzy attempted to roll up the hill and Stu got very excited about the perfect U shaped valleys that could be seen! There were a few rocks to climb on and we tried to find the geo-cache which was on the summit but failed.

Tom and Izzy rolled most of the way back down to the car park and we encountered a crazy sheep which literally jumped down the hill. We realized there was another geo-cache by the church so decided to find it so at least we could tick one off in the area before we headed back to our cottage.

Coniston Water

After tea Stu and I decided to climb the hill behind our cottage to see the views over the lake and wander down to the lake.

The next morning we had to leave for home and we were going to visit a water fall but the weather was atrocious so we just headed straight down the motorway back to Gloucester.