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Going west
Sep. 21st, 2008 08:31 pmHaving accepted a lunch invitation for today in Lancashire, we decided to make a weekend of it, take the opportunity to visit somewhere in the Lakes, overnight near our destination and drive home this afternoon.
So we set off yesterday morning, and arrived at Blackwell in time to lunch there before looking round. The house was built overlooking lake Windermere as a holiday home for a wealthy brewer from Manchester, in the Arts and Crafts style, went through a succession of owners and uses, and has been restored by a local charity within the last ten years. The upstairs rooms are pleasant, and are used for exhibitions, but it's the downstairs rooms which are impressive. An oak-panelled passage leads from the entrance to the White Drawing Room, so that you look along the dark wood into the white room and straight out of a window onto the radiance of the sun on the lake - well, maybe not every day, but there's also a large fireplace to give warmth and light when the sun isn't shining, and inglenook seats on either side make almost an inner room. The Main Hall works on the same principle - a huge room built on the scale of a medieval Great Hall, but all alcoves and inglenooks, window seats and a minstrels' gallery, like spaces for private conversation in a shopping mall. The garden is small and simple, but why distract yourself from the views of the lake and fells? I prefer Melsetter, of course, but Blackwell was still well worth seeing.
We set off south along the lake, with time in hand to stop for a cup of tea, but no real plans, and pulled off the road at a National Trust sign (as members, we have free entry, so we can drop in for a short visit without feeling obliged to get our money's worth). This was Fell Foot Park, Victorian gardens and boat houses along the edge of Windermere. We strolled down to the lake and sat outside the tearooms (converted from a Victorian boat house built to look like some rocky grotto - very strange).
We walked back to the car the long way, along the shore, and noticed first one group of geese, then another, then a huge stream of them, swimming along under a wooded shore opposite and then out onto the open water, stringing right across the lake. You may have to click the picture and go to the larger version to see them properly - or you may be totally blasé about some well-known habit - but I've chosen to include this picture because the sheer unexpectedness of it gave me such great pleasure.
After that, there was a pleasant and scenic drive to Settle, where we stayed the night - with a sudden last-minute stop in Giggleswick for a bookshop. We liked Settle itself, though we were less taken with our accommodation, but enjoyed a brief stroll last night and a longer one this morning - and discovered that there are places to stay!
Lunch in Clayton-le-Willows with the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association was fun: the venue was a very swish hotel, where we had a private dining room (with chandelier, huge mirror and seventeenth century family portraits) to ourselves. We met some new people and caught up with some old friends and generally enjoyed ourselves.
And then we came home.
So we set off yesterday morning, and arrived at Blackwell in time to lunch there before looking round. The house was built overlooking lake Windermere as a holiday home for a wealthy brewer from Manchester, in the Arts and Crafts style, went through a succession of owners and uses, and has been restored by a local charity within the last ten years. The upstairs rooms are pleasant, and are used for exhibitions, but it's the downstairs rooms which are impressive. An oak-panelled passage leads from the entrance to the White Drawing Room, so that you look along the dark wood into the white room and straight out of a window onto the radiance of the sun on the lake - well, maybe not every day, but there's also a large fireplace to give warmth and light when the sun isn't shining, and inglenook seats on either side make almost an inner room. The Main Hall works on the same principle - a huge room built on the scale of a medieval Great Hall, but all alcoves and inglenooks, window seats and a minstrels' gallery, like spaces for private conversation in a shopping mall. The garden is small and simple, but why distract yourself from the views of the lake and fells? I prefer Melsetter, of course, but Blackwell was still well worth seeing.
We set off south along the lake, with time in hand to stop for a cup of tea, but no real plans, and pulled off the road at a National Trust sign (as members, we have free entry, so we can drop in for a short visit without feeling obliged to get our money's worth). This was Fell Foot Park, Victorian gardens and boat houses along the edge of Windermere. We strolled down to the lake and sat outside the tearooms (converted from a Victorian boat house built to look like some rocky grotto - very strange).
We walked back to the car the long way, along the shore, and noticed first one group of geese, then another, then a huge stream of them, swimming along under a wooded shore opposite and then out onto the open water, stringing right across the lake. You may have to click the picture and go to the larger version to see them properly - or you may be totally blasé about some well-known habit - but I've chosen to include this picture because the sheer unexpectedness of it gave me such great pleasure.
After that, there was a pleasant and scenic drive to Settle, where we stayed the night - with a sudden last-minute stop in Giggleswick for a bookshop. We liked Settle itself, though we were less taken with our accommodation, but enjoyed a brief stroll last night and a longer one this morning - and discovered that there are places to stay!
Lunch in Clayton-le-Willows with the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association was fun: the venue was a very swish hotel, where we had a private dining room (with chandelier, huge mirror and seventeenth century family portraits) to ourselves. We met some new people and caught up with some old friends and generally enjoyed ourselves.
And then we came home.
