It's taken me longer to read this book than I'd hoped. At first it all sounded fantastic, with an elderly bookseller hero and a plot involving spies, ciphers, hidden libraries and a missing (and extremely valuable) book. And at first, it bowled along with great vigour as Isaac Inchbold was asked to track down the [...]
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 Leftovers' is an odd name for a TV series that isn't about cooking. It sounds more like a slightly congealed, cold roast beef sandwich than an engaging drama. However, in this case it's definitely not the former. We first discovered the series on Sky box sets, and have been binge-watching it for the last [...]
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'd planned to visit a museum in Lancaster really. But part way down the M6 motorway, Dave said he'd heard that it was easy to get to Hest Bank now the new Morecambe link road is open. For anyone who doesn't know, Hest Bank is a small settlement on the Morecambe Bay coast, just north [...]
