Be Excellent To Each Other

The wife and I are off to The Lake District for a couple of days next week and having never been before I wondered if any of you delightful homies had tips for places to go-a-walking in the area? I'm doing the 3 peaks walk at the end of July so something fairly demanding would be more than welcome.

We're staying at a hotel in Newby Bridge in Windermere if that helps.

Also any other general tips such as "Wear clothes", "Take Monster Munch" and "Don't leave the iron on" are invited.

Wear clothes.

beware the Ides of March.

There's only really on lake there, and it's up north. Hope that helps.

We're at the Lakeside Hotel so the one thing we're actually guaranteed to find is a lake. Well unless we go out of the wrong door.

Nope. The hotel is lying to you. Filthy local lies. I'll bet you £10 it's not by a lake.

Coniston and Windermere?

If you're going mid-week then it should be fairly quiet, normally I'd advise travelling further away from the Windermere area or else on a busy day it can come to feel like walking through town, not really a problem though as when you start driving the Lakes is a pretty small place but lots of it is still fairly desolate. If you want something reasonably demanding then the Fairfield Horseshoe is a great walk (just google it and you'll get some maps and stuff), about 12 miles over high ground with several climbs and descents. Amazing views all the way round too. If it's your first visit then I'd make sure you definitely go up Helvellyn via Striding Edge, a long steady ascent followed by a good scramble over loads of rocks.

Oh and take a map and a compass and two mobile phones, one each so your wife can summon help as you lie dashed on the rocks at the bottom of a crevasse.

Neither of those are lakes. I am so much smarter than all of you.
In the sense that I saw that particular edition of QI, ho ho!

Mere means lake so Lake Windermere actually means Lake Winder Lake and Coniston is Coniston Water, whilst they are all obviously lakes only Lake Bassenthwaite is actually called a Lake. I knew this before it was on QI. So there "CUS".

is that the darts one?

If that is my real name? I'll tell you now, it's not. Hint: my middle name is Ulysses.

Make sure you buy some traditional gingerbread while you're there. I think it's from Grassmere, or somesuch. It's delicious.

No-one else can the things you doooooooooo.....

Corner Ulysses Sofa, yeah right!

No. The Lakeside County Club is about 300 miles away in Frimley, Surrey. "County Club" is abit misleading as the kind of people who go there think Jim Davidson is a quality upmarket act.

He only calls himself that so he can have his own theme song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ4c1X5ene8

Speaking of which, I have an idea for a live action remake of that starring Justin Lee-Collins.

The full-length Ulysses theme is an awesome bit of crap disco by the way. I do highly, highly recommend it. It went down an absolute storm at the one Uni disco night I attended (purely because our flatmate had repeatedly promised us that he would play it after a week of our mithering).

Visit Wordsworth's houses. All of them

Also, I have always fancied going to the Pencil Museum if you are anywhere near Keswick.

What's the point? You probably get lead around by some blunt idiot drawing their own conclusions then a rough sketch of how the whole thing came about.

Ooh! I love the Lakes!

Okay, here's places to go...

The Masons Arms is hard to get to but does delicious food and lots and lots of speciality ales. Nowt much use to friend driver, but it is in a lovely setting and featured in Bryan Talbot's uplifting 'overcoming child abuse' and Beatrix Potter related comic book 'The Tale of One Bad Rat'.

http://www.masonsarmsstrawberrybank.co.uk/

There's the utterly beautiful Ullswater, which has a nice mix of walks and climbs around it. Round the Patterdale end there's some gentle-to-moderate walks up onto the hill top for hungover days, and above Glen Ridig there's a lane that leads up to some camping barns and above that there's the Hellvellyn walk along Striding Edge, which I did once in whiteout conditions a few years ago on New Year's eve - and that was a bit traumatic, I can tell you. It goes up to about 3,100ft.

http://www.lakedistrictletsgo.co.uk/act ... ellyn.html

The Badger Bar located between Grasmere and Ambleside is a bit of a walk if you're setting off from Ambleside, but is well worth it. Very good Bluebird Ale. Try it. Also the pub in question has the most comfortable chairs in the universe. Almost impossible to get up from them.

Ambleside itself is surprisingly disappointing pub wise though. It has a fair few pubs, but most of them are a bit rubbishly mainstream to be honest. There's also a basement nightclub that's extraordinarily unpleasant, with a music volume so loud you literally cannot hear yourself speak. Literally. LITERALLY. On the plus side if either of you need a haircut there's a doddery old man who single handedly runs a barbers near the bus turnaround in the centre. He only charges £2-£3 for a very respectable cut.

There's row boats from the Ambleside Youth Hostel on Lake Windermere, and Beatrix Potter's cottage on the other side of the lake is worth poking around. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I love Beatrix Potter, but that the film Miss Potter was without doubt one of the worst and most insultingly stupid films I have ever seen.

Kendal is utterly confusing road wise and a bit crap to be honest - and full of awful uncouth youth. So don't be fooled by Kendal's Mint Cake into thinking it might be good and lovely. There's a couple of decent pubs there though. I think.

Hope that helps.

Good suggestions thanks Pete & Mark.

I intend to do as little driving as possible unless there's some roads like the one in that Peugeot advert that Charlie Brooker loves with the whole man and the face thing.

I went to Kendal. It was depressing and shite.

219 Bananas.