The local rugby lions run a charity classic car rally at Grasmere every year. Every year since we've been here, we've managed to miss it. But yesterday, in spite of grey clouds and spitting rain, we made it. We arrived in the village far too early so had a mooch round first, followed by coffee [...]
Well, march might be pushing it, but we certainly took part in a protest on Saturday against the current state of Northern trains. When we first moved to Windermere, one reason for choosing the town was the fact that it had a rail station, with reasonable links to the outside world. Trains ran roughly every [...]
Like many rural areas, Cumbria loves its country shows. Every year in September there's the big Westmorland County Show, filled to the brim with cows, sheep, horses, tractors, stalls selling farming equipment and displays of combine harvesters. It's wonderful for the local farming community but a little too countrified for us - and very expensive [...]
The title refers to the pet name for our local newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette. It's based in Kendal and has just reached a rather impressive milestone - it's 200 years old this year! The paper was first set up in 1818 by William Wordsworth and a crony, to counter what they saw as the Whig [...]
We had a rare (genuinely rare) treat at the weekend - a trip to Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal to see a painting by Claude Monet. The gallery is a lovely place to visit anyway, with a regular exhibition of local artist George Romney's works, links to local notables such as Lady Anne Clifford, [...]
On Saturday we braved the bitter cold (minus 2c, to be precise), wrapped up in our woollies and headed to the Windermere Christmas market. The town held this for the first time last year, and great fun it was too. It was called 'Ja Windermere' in a slightly odd nod to German Christmas markets elsewhere, [...]
I've just set up a brand new Facebook page for 'Got Ghosts?' and to celebrate I'm holding a daft little contest, with one free copy of the book to give away. All you need to do is pop along to the page, have a look at the photo I've posted there and come up with [...]
