Distance: 3km; with Lynsey, Isabel, John, Steph & Sierra
Owing to the lack of space in the hostel car park last night, we had had to park in a nearby national park pay & display car park that was free until 8am, although it did have some of those nasty automatic number plate recognition cameras at it's entrance. Therefore I was up and out of the hostel shortly after dawn to make sure that the car was out of the car park by 8am! However this did mean that I got to see this fantastic view across Windmere at dawn, with the coloured clouds and moon reflected in the very still water of the lake:
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| Windermere at dawn |
Anyway, now onto today's walk! We had decided last night that we would go for a shorter walk today and found a very pleasant sounding stroll around Tarn Hows in our ATP walks book. Therefore we set off walking from the National Trust car park soon after 11am and wandered down to the tarn.
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| Tarn Hows |
It was clearly a popular place to be, but that's not really too surprising as it's a lovely spot combined with today's dry and sunny weather. The path around the tarn was broad and smooth, which meant for easy pushchairing - no lifting the front wheel over rocks today! At one point there was a fallen dead tree by the side of the path, which people had hammered coins into for some reason thus creating a money tree!
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| A money tree! |
We continued round to the far end of the tarn, where we stopped for a pleasant picnic lunch at a conveniently placed bench. As we finished lunch, the sun came out and we strolled through the woods of the Rose Castle Plantation.
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| Tarn Hows |
On the SE side of the tarn, a small promontory was covered in around 50 pine trees with the surrounding area free of trees and instead covered in grass and bracken, making it quite photogenic.
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| Tarn Hows |
We returned to the cars shortly before 2pm and enjoyed ice creams before heading home. It had been a very enjoyable weekend and it was nice for a change to have come away to the Lakes for the weekend and actually spent the days walking alongside lakes instead of up in the hills (although the hill walking is obviously excellent too!)
I know a lot of people moaned about all the "improvements" to Tarn Hows when they were pout in place, but having once had a young family with pushchairs and the like, it was a god-send!
ReplyDeleteI don't actually think the paths detract from the beauty of the place either.
Sounds like a lovely weekend Alistair.
:-)