Scarborough

Coming up - Scarborough, one of the best costal towns of UK................................

Cumbria - Lake District

If you ask anyone here what the best country side in uk is, most probably you will get the answer as Cumbria-The Lake District. It consists of tiny villages with most stunning surrounds you can imagine. You get mix of everything here, nice village life, good mountains, wonderful lakes, great woods and lots more. It is a diverse place and when you are visiting a place like this, you have to do proper planning and select only few places to see. I did some research on some places which would fit into a two day trip and booked a B&B in a village keswick. For this trip the other people are suresh, amar(my other housemate along with suresh) and subbu. Subbu used to work with me in the same company when i was doing my part time job in UK. he was a wonderful traveller and was always ready when going somewhere. I never went with amar before and he was also a wonderful companion in these journies. Most importantly he got a car :D. So we 4 decided to goto cumbria and were eagerly waiting for the day to come.

The day finally came, it was a saturday and we all started with amar driving the car. I was sittin g with him in the front as a navigato and subbu, suresh were sitting in the back seat. Amar had a GPS Navigator and it really helped us on numerous occasions in the trip while going to a particular place.

The Navigator

The route from leeds to cumbria is wonderful and it was a great delight for us as we passed each tiny village enroute viewing the beautiful british country side. The first place we wanted to go was winderemere. It is one of the most famous places in cumbria and was the nearest one for us. It is a small town but always full of water acitivities. The winderemere lake is very famous and you get loads of rides there. We stopped at the town centre and proceeded to the boating area. We stopped at a boating museum and walked down to the lake. There was a good church in the way and there was an english wedding going on that day. I went inside with suresh and we had a good talk with an old woman inside the church. She pointed us important places nearby and to my delight the lake district is home to one of my favourite poets-william wordsworth. Now let me post some of the lake photos. It was a bit cloudy at that time and we wanted to do boating in another place. so we just checked the lake had a coffee, sat there for sometime and started our journey again.

Subbu, amar and me


Windermere Town center





From here we proceeded to keswick but stopped at couple of good towns inbetween.

From here we reached keswick in the evening and it was becoming dark very fast. We headed strait to the keswick lake and went for a walk into the woods. The keswick lake is one of the most beautiful lakes in lake district and has some wondeful lake side walks. It was quite dark and i was using old camera at that time, the pics came quite dull.

All four of us


A gallery in keswick.

We had some coffee and cakes in a cafe near keswick and then went to our B&B. It was a nice and very comfortable. In the night we felt very hungry and went to the village centre and found a kebab shop finally. subbu and amar had kebabs, i had a pizza with suresh. Next morning we had a good english breakfast at that b&b. The owners came from south africa and settled here. They were very nice and talked about some interesting places around to visit. Saying bye bye to our hosts we hit the road again and went to the keswick village centre.

The B&B where we stayed










Keswick town centre




Our Car

From there we wanted to go to coniston to do some boating and hit the road again. Just when we were reaching coniston we found a beautiful walk beside the road. We found a parking space nearby so we parked the car and went on for some walking around a small water body. The walk was very good and i was able to get some good pictures.

You have to fun the fundoo hairstyle of suresh here :D

Again we were on the road and reached coniston. The roads were really awesome with many bends and reminded us of the ghat roads in india. We went to the boating place and hired two boats. Amar and subbu in one boat, i shared one boat with suresh. We had 30 mins to ride the motor boat in the river and had great fun driving it. We were a bit afraid in the begining when the boat was shaking but later we had quite fun.

In the return we stopped at windermere again and went to a fresh water aquarium, spent some time there and started our return journey to leeds. I throughly enjoyed the trip and will always remember this one as one of my best here :)

Do join me for my next journey. Till then have a nice time.........

Clapham and Ingleborough Mountain

Clapham is one of the beatiful places that i went for trekking in uk. The unspoilt pretty village of Clapham lies in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I have always been a great fan of yorkshire dales ever since when i first went to grassington village(about which i will talk later). Clapham is a part of yorkshire dales and provides some stunning sceneries for long walks.

We (srikanth, suresh and myself) started from leeds to clapham village on train somewhere around 9 in the morning. suresh always liked long walks and used to accompany me in most of my trips in uk. srikanth always liked to have his pictures taken :D but jokes apart he is also a nice companion and we travelled to many places in uk like this. It was a nice, sunny , bright day and we couldnt have asked for anything better. particularly for me, as i was looking to shoot some great pictures with my new polariser filter. The train journey was awesome with some excellent green pastures , woods and i started taking pictures from the train itself. Some of them you can see below

It was a bit long journey from leeds and finally we got down at clapham station. As it was a bank holiday there was no bus to the village center and we had to walk to the village from the station. It was around 2.5 miles to the village but the location was so wonderful that we hardly felt anything.

On the way to Village

One of the main reasons we came to this place is the ingleborough cave and the mountain. The cave is a very famous one in uk. Impressive floodlit cave stalactites & stalagmites up to 350 million years old are the main attractions. The cave is about 1 km in length and you have to wear a helmet and torch which are provided. In some places inside the cave, the roof is so low that you have to bend while walking. Some of the pics i took inside the cave are

Once we came out of the cave we proceeded to the ingleborough mountain. It is a famous mountain and called one of the 'three peaks'. Before we climbed to the cave we stopped at a small waterfall in the village

With Srikanth

The guide in the cave was very professional and took us to a good tour around the cave. Once we came out of the cave we proceeded to climb the mountain. Just before the steep ascent to the mountain we came to a place called gaping gill and this is a steep waterfall falling to over 100m on some special days they operate a life to go to the bottom of the waterfall. The surrounds of gaping gill are too good. I took some of the most memorable pictures here.

After this we proceed our journey to the mountain peak. srikanth was tired at this point and started going back to the village. even though i was also tired i wanted to go a bit further with suresh to take come pictures from the top so we two continued. after almost reaching the top where there was a very steep climb, i stopped and settled at a spot for taking pictures while suresh who was determined to the very top continued. I started experiementing with my new filter and took some beautiful pictures here.

After sometime we started our descent and met srikanth at the village.
At the end of the day we were completely tired with no energy left in our bodies. That day we walked for something like 18km in total. Walked back to the station got a train and had a good rest in leeds. It was one of the best places i went in Uk. So that ends the Clapham trip. So join me for my next journey :)))