Ravenglass to Berwick - with memories of crazy games in Jedburgh...

Gosh, it's been ages hasn't it? How the Dickens are you all? Sorry to have fallen silent for so long, I'm afraid I rather fell foul of the pressures of the dreaded day job - something that makes me that little bit more keen to get back in the 'van and get away again. Not long now, I'm pleased to say, before we point the Snail northwards and head back to the Northern Highlands, but for now I'll have to console myself with memories of our Easter expedition.

We'd spent a few nights pitched up at Ravenglass on the North West Coast of England, and it was time to move on to pastures new - on the North East Coast of England at the Caravan Club Site in Berwick-upon-Tweed. First of course, we had to travel north.

I'm always surprised by how far north the eastern part of England actually goes. In spite of the fact that they're both pretty near the England/Scotland border, Berwick-upon-Tweed is a ­long­ way north of Ravenglass, and so to get there we had to drive through the southern marches of Scotland. As regular readers may remember, we love Scotland more than any other place on Earth (except maybe Yorkshire...) so this was no real hardship.

The borders is a place we tend to pass through as we head for the Highlands, so although the area is undoubtedly beautiful we don't actually know it all that well. As we headed north and east we passed near the neat little town of Newcastleton, then past Jedburgh, which is home to a pretty impressive ruined abbey and the strangest ball game I've ever come across.

Mrs Snail and I visited this border town a couple of years ago, and very much enjoyed mooching around the Abbey - founded in the early twelfth century and often on the receiving end of raids from both sides of the oft shifting border. It was February mind you and absolutely freezing, so we soon retired to the nearby tourist information centre to buy a guidebook, warm up and ask if the nice young lady behind the counter could suggest anywhere for lunch. 

The nice young lady gave us several recommendations - I cannot for the life of me remember where we ate, it was a couple of years ago after all - and also warned us "you'll notice all the shops and things are boarded up. Don't worry, they're open, it's just that it's the Handball today..." When we enquired what "The Handball" was she was a little unclear on the details. Somewhat bemused we set off to get lunch, and then made our way to the centre of town to see what on earth she had been talking about.

By some fortune we arrived at what appeared to be an opportune moment. All of the businesses on the high street were indeed boarded over, with little knots of people crowding in doorways looking towards the open area at the top of the street where a crowd was gathered around a stone cross - which I assumed to be the old market cross. There didn't seem to be any way of differentiating people into teams - I discovered later that the locals are divided into "Uppies" and "Downies", but I'm still non the wiser as to how you tell the two apart, presumably Jedburgh is a small enough town that people just know - and to be honest the whole thing seemed a little chaotic.

Then one of those serious looking little grey haired men who always pop up at events like this climbed up onto the base of the cross with what looked like a small, black leather rugby ball - about the size of a cricket ball, perhaps a little larger, with coloured ribbons streaming from one of its pointed ends. He launched this into the crowd, and what can only be described as the most insane sporting event I have ever witnessed began.

In many ways, not a lot happened. Some guy caught the ball and about thirty other guys immediately jumped on him, pinning him under a pile of punching, kicking bodies, all presumably trying to prise the ball from his grasp. After a minute or so the ball came free, and another bloke sprinted away managing to get twenty or thirty yards down the street before being brought down and pinned under another pile of single minded individuals.

This appeared to be how the game was played. At various points the ball would  be freed and the seething mass of players would move to a different location. At one point the pile of bodies - and presumably the ball, although it was genuinely difficult to tell - was underneath a delivery van whose occupants had shut themselves in as they saw the forty or so berserk looking players sprinting towards them. At another point there was a break down some of the alleyways. Not sure what happened there, but a ambulance was called for a player who'd somehow had his head smashed into a wall down the hill near the bus station. At another point the pile of players was in the middle of the road with cars steering gingerly around them.

I did mention that the roads were still open did I?

They were.

Honestly, had the nice young lady in the tourist information centre not given us the heads up I would have simply assumed there was a riot going on. As it was , it ranks not just as the strangest, but also the most fascinating sporting event I've ever seen. I don't know where the goals were, if any were scored or who won. And I don't care. It was brilliant, in the way incomprehensible traditions so often are, and I feel privileged that we stumbled into it that cold, cold February day.

One of these days I'll make a point of going back and find out more about it all, but we had places to be, so we skirted around the edge of the town and pressed on ever eastwards. We paused for lunch in a rather spacious and sunny lay-by just outside the town of Coldstream, before setting off once more for the eastern coast, arriving in the historic town of Berwick-upon-Tweed in the early afternoon.

The Caravan Club site sits halfway up a hill on the opposite side of the Tweed from the fortified w area of the old town, looking out to the open sea across slightly shabby rooftops, the river and the "pier", which is actually a windswept sandstone harbour wall. The view is captivating, if you like watching ships slide past on the horizon - which we do. Rather a lot of our "in 'van" time was spent doing just that.

We did, of course, get out and about as well. More on that in the next posting...

A Booking good time in Ambleside...

Ambleside is a popular place, what they call a "honey pot" destination. I can understand why - it's lovely. Or at least it would be if there weren't so many bloody tourists*.

The town is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. Because its lovely, people go there. Because so many people go there it gets horribly crowded to the point that you can't fit onto the pavements. to a degree, 'twas ever thus. Ambleside has been in the centre of things ever since 1650, when it was granted a charter to hold a market. Then, when the leisured classes began to make tours of the lakes in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century Ambleside as a logical destination. It's right at the centre of the district, it's handy for Windermere - the largest of all the lakes (about which more later) and of course William Wordsworth, that great Lakeland poet and hero of the Romantic movement lived just down the road in Grasmere. It's also very handy for the Langdales, and one of the highest pubs in England is literally just up the hill at the top of the Kirkstone Pass.

So, it became established as a destination and so became "the place to go", and once that happened the town's fate was sealed.

So it was that after a delicious lunch at The Glasshouse we found ourselves on the crammed streets of grey slate buildings, slightly sweltering under an unexpectedly strong sun and a clear blue sky. We browsed around the myriad of little shops - the town is well endowed with establishments catering to both the "outdoorsy" tourists who need boots and waterproofs and climbing gear as well as the less adventurous types who prefer an art gallery and a nice cup of tea.

For us though, there is one shop that cannot be missed. Fred Holdsworth's Bookshop is perhaps the ultimate hidden gem. I first came across the place about twenty five years ago as a young scout on my first summer camp above Ullswater. Our troop outing to Ambleside was one of the highlights of the week, and while everybody else was ogling the rucksacks and walking boots in the camping stores, I found myself in a little slice of wonderland.

Fred's is a small place, essentially two very small rooms stacked on top of each other, with every available square inch filled with books. I was a bookish kid, and I fell for the place instantly. Somewhere I still have the "Spill ink, Not Blood - Fred Holdsworth's Bookshop, Ambleside" pin badge they gave me all those years ago. Since that first visit I've been back every time I've been in Ambleside. There's just so much stuff in there. Terry Pratchett once opined that a good bookshop was essentially a genteel black hole that knows how to read - he might have had Fred's in mind. I certainly can't imagine how you can cram so many books into so small a place without altering at least a couple of the laws of physics...

On this occasion we found ourselves deep in conversation with the bloke behind the counter about Assynt and the Northern Highlands - our favourite place in the whole world - as we joined in a conversation he was already having with a very nice German couple who were looking for suggestions about where they could go next on their travels. That's the sort of place Fred's is; friendly staff who know their stuff and always have the time to chat. The nice German couple paid for their books (including a couple about the North West Highlands) and we fell into chatting about the places we knew in the area.

By the end of our little discussion I'd bought, on his recommendation, a copy of The Fell Walker by local author Michael Wood. "It's mostly set around here" he enthused, "but there are some bits in Assynt and up on the North Coast around Tongue - you'll recognise them!" He also assured me that it was a cracking good read of a thriller, and I must say he was right. I do like a good thriller, especially when it's set in places I can relate to. We left Fred's in a cheerful mood, Mrs Snail having acquired a couple of books herself. That's the danger of a good bookshop like Fred's - it's genuinely hard to leave without making a purchase.

These are the kinds of risks we like to take...

The other landmark that Ambleside is famous for is the little Bridge House.  Painted by all sorts of artists, including greats like Turner, and allegedly the most photographed building in the Lakes - as you see, my photograph also contains people taking a photograph, and there was a guy behind me taking a photograph too, so that's probably true...

The little "one up, one down" building straddles Stock Beck, which used to drive the Fulling Mill which now houses The Glasshouse (you can see it on the left of my picture here...) and is undeniably attractive, hence the "most photographed" status. When my primary school teacher first showed me a picture of this I was told that a poor man had built his house on a bridge because he couldn't afford to buy any land. Certainly local tradition claims that a family with six children once lived here, but any historian will tell you that "local tradition" is approximately as reliable as a 1977 Austen Maxi, so I'm keeping my pinch of salt handy.

The truth is that when the good folks at nearby Ambleside Hall wanted a place to store apples they were less than keen to pay land tax, so they built the store over the Beck, arguing that there was no land involved. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Bridge House, icon if the Lake District, started out as a tax dodge. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that a family moved in at a later date of course, but it was built as a tax saving store room. Fitting I suppose, therefore, that it now belongs to the nation - or at least to the National Trust, which is almost the same thing - and is I think the smallest and least comfortable National Trust Shop in England.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hang on a minute Road Snail, you're in Ambleside, at the head of Lake Windermere - didn't you go and look at the water?"

Well, dear reader, no. We didn't.

You see, the truth is that Ambleside isn't on the shores of Lake Windermere. The town of Windermere, half way down the lake is, as is Bowness, at the far end. But there's a goodly walk between Ambleside and the little settlement of Waterhead, which does sit at the end of the lake. It's a walk well worth taking, don't get me wrong. You can catch one of the Windermere steamers from here, and sail down the lake to either or both of the aforementioned towns. It's a pleasant cruise on a nice day and something we've done many times. Ambleside Youth Hostel can also be found here, housed in what must once have been a fairly swanky hotel. It's certainly the best appointed Youth Hostel I've ever stayed in...

For us though, it was getting late and we still had to drive home the long way 'round. So, we mooched our way back to the car park and headed back through Coniston to Ravenglass. Our sojourn in the Western Lakes was almost over, but the expedition was far from over...

*Yes, yes, I know. We're tourists too - but like all tourists we labour under the delusion that we are somehow not part of the problem...

Eating in Glasshouses

There are a lot of excellent places to eat in Ambleside, and everyone who knows the place has a favourite. I have fond memories of Zeffirelli's(popularly known as "Zeff's"), a rather good Pizzeria on Compston road which has its own cinema. My sister, who lived in Ambleside for a while, will expound at length the virtues of the The Apple Pie, on Rydal Road. Both are excellent, and I highly recommend them to you.

They're not where we went for lunch, however.

Our lunch spot of choice on many recent visits to Ambleside has been the the Glasshouse Restaurant, also on Rydal Road, and in point of fact, just on the edge of the main car park in what used to be a fulling mill - don't ask me, something to do with textiles, given that it's situated in an area rather over blessed with sheep, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's something you do with wool. The water wheel that powered the operation is still there, presumably because the building - which dates from the fifteenth century - is listed.

 We discovered the place on a cold, dark, damp January day a few years ago when we were still new to caravan living. We'd spent New Year pitched up at the Troutbeck Camping and Caravanning Club site on the A66. (There is also a Troutbeck just outside Ambleside, whatever you do, don't mix the two up - the Ambleside Troutbeck is at the top of a steep hill that even after years of taking the Road Snail to the Highlands I still wouldn't fancy tacking with the 'van...)

Ambleside, like most places inside the Lake District National Park is mostly built from the local deep grey Cumbrian slate. On a cold drizzly afternoon in early January this architectural conformity does not in any way add to the gaiety of nations.  Something about the Glasshouse attracted us on that miserable winter afternoon and we were not disappointed. I recall an excellent meal, good service and a warm (in every sense of the word) welcome.

Also their bread, oil and balsamic vinegar is utterly irresistible.

This time around we were ushered  to a table on the first floor, with a rather nice view out onto the famous  Bridge House (about which, more later) and began to peruse the menu. We found it relatively unchanged from our last visit, and with the kind of reckless "let's try it and see" abandon that regular readers of this blog will have come to expect from me I did what I always do and plumped for a cheeseburger with bacon. (I always go for bacon when it's an option because, well, it's bacon, and bacon is awesome...)

Mrs Snail, who is rather more discerning in such matters actually read the menu and selected a chicken salad sandwich on focaccia bread with spring onion mayo. We sat back in the dazzling sunshine that streamed through the window and waited for the food to arrive while we inspected some of the artwork displayed on the wall.  I can't remember when restaurants started displaying artwork for sale on their walls - perhaps they always did and I only started noticing recently - but it makes sense, although I'd have to say the oil paintings displayed near our table were hideously over priced...

Anyway. I'm no art critic, so let's get back to the point.

The food duly arrived. My burger was fat and juicy in a bun stuffed with lettuce and tomato. The cheese was tangy, the bacon was perfectly cooked (and believe me when I say I'm really fussy about bacon) and the chips were deliciously crisp, thick and golden. All as expected - the burgers are always good at the Glasshouse. What I hadn't been expecting was the pot of Aioli that came along with it. I don't remember that from my last visit - the Glasshouse always seems to give just a little more each time. I'm going to guess that the Aioli was made on site, because I simply don't believe that you can buy it that strong - you could actually see the little bits of crushed garlic in there - it was awesome! I love garlic and having something this powerful to dip my chips in was the unctuous garlicy icing on the cake.

I pronounce myself to have been happy, happy, happy.

Mrs Snail's chicken sandwich was every bit as impressive - at least initially.

For a start, it was huge! I mean we didn't measure it or anything, but I reckon that focaccia rectangle it must've been about ten inches by six inches. That's a lot of sandwich. Inside were thickly sliced slabs of roasted chicken and plenty of salad. It all looked fantastic, but was pronounced to be merely "OK" by Mrs Snail, who was somewhat disappointed by the spring onion mayo which in her opinion was rather light on the spring onion. Given the punch packed by my Aioli this was quite surprising, but there you go...

Personally I was stuffed, but Mrs Snail was determined to have a desert because she remembered how good the Raspberry Creme Brulee was. She was right. While I sipped an excellent Latte she cracked open the amber gold sugar glazing covering a richly vanilla custard that sat atop a wonderfully sharp mush of raspberries at the bottom. This was declared to be "fabulous" - which coming from Mrs Snail is praise indeed as she's something of a brulee connoisseur.

I love the Glasshouse. The service is friendly, the location is fantastic, the food is brilliant, what more could you wish for at lunchtime?

Wastwater to Ambleside - a view to a drive...

Just up the road from Ravenglass on the A595 is the turning for Wasdale Head and Wastwater. In 2007 viewers of ITV declared that this was the finest view in England and since it was a nice day we decided we'd take a look. The roads were gloriously narrow and twisty - and in places narrowed still further by drifts of still unmelted snow. It might well have been the beginning of April, but the temperature was still a degree below freezing and the snow that had fallen in that part of Cumbria in the previous couple of weeks had been unusually heavy.

We twisted our way towards the end of the lake, and were frankly beginning to wonder if we were on the right road when suddenly, just past the Youth Hostel, we rounded a corner and the magnificent sheet of deep blue water revealed itself to us.

The lake is very nearly three miles long, and at 79 metres is the deepest lake in England. Apparently once upon a time there was a little garden full of gnomes, complete with picket fence on the lake bed to give sub-aqua enthusiasts something to look at while they were down there. After a number of fatalities however, the relevant authorities had it removed. Rumours persist that in fact all that happened was that somebody moved the whole thing deeper into the lake, below the 50 metre limit beyond which the Police divers tasked with the garden's removal are not legally permitted to dive.

Part of me is quite prepared to believe this - I know a few diving enthusiasts and they can be, to put it mildly, right little scamps. However, I'm also aquainted with a couple of police divers. They're very good at what they do, and take a very dim view indeed of people doing things that encourage the taking of unnecessary risks underwater - generally they're the one who have to go and recover the bodies, apart from anything else. I strongly suspect that if the Police Diving unit really believed that the garden had been placed below their legal limit, they'd have gone back when they were off duty and made sure it was truly gone.

Still, it's a nice story.

We continued down the valley towards Wasdale Head, actually a little way beyond the end of the lake itself. There's not much there, but it is a good place to take in the great hills that surround it - Great Gable and Scafell Pike. On a warmer day, with perhaps less snow, I might've had a wander up one of them - the views would have been spectacular on such a clear day - but I didn't fancy trudging through the snow that was still clinging not just to the peaks, but most of the major routes up.

Oh alright, I was also feeling pretty lazy. Besides, we had plans for the afternoon, and the the morning was nearly over.

So, we pointed the car towards the top of Eskdale and headed for the Hardnott Pass, Wrynose, Langdale and Ambleside, that much loved, over visited, tourist choked honey trap at the heart of the Lake District. Except, presumably as a result of still uncleared snowfall - although the "ROAD AHEAD CLOSED" sign was rather lacking in ancillary detail - the Hardnott pass was closed. This led us to follow a somewhat random route through the little village of Ulpha, over some rather spectacular hills and finally approaching Ambleside via Coniston.

It was somewhat convoluted, but actually rather fun. There were times when the road ran through cuttings in snowdrifts that were taller than the car - and our car is taller than average - and the road gave the impression that we were level with the high peaks we could see in the distance. I'd love to tell you which road we were on, but we'd given up on the map and the TomTom satnav unit that came with the car (as tow jockeys we have little time for Satnav - for reasons we may go into at a later date - and would certainly never have got the thing if it hadn't been built in) rather unhelpfully told us we were driving along an "unnamed road".

Still, we eventually made it to the heaving metropolis that is downtown Ambleside and headed through the traditional traffic jam (Ambleside really wasn't built to deal with thousands of modern tourists  in hundreds of cars, and accordingly just doesn't) for the main car park, opposite what used to be the Charlotte Mason College, and is now something to do with the NHS. It's a large pay and display car park with a few hundred spaces. However, it was also a bright, sunny day in the middle of the Easter holidays, and predictably it was full to bursting. There were no free spaces, and about a dozen other cars prowling around waiting to spring if a space became available.

I'm an impatient sort of chap and was ready to give in and seek parking elsewhere (not sure where I thought we'd go - Ambleside is not overly blessed with parking spaces) but Mrs Snail reminded me that this is a car park which always rewards patience. Sure enough less than five minutes had passed before we spotted illuminated brake lights on a vehicle parked a few rows ahead of us. Since we knew the car had not recently arrived, brake lights meant only one thing - it was getting ready to depart! With a joyful cry we accelerated forwards and swung neatly into the spot just as the Land Rover Discovery pulled out of it. Perfect.

So, there we were. After a significantly longer drive than we'd anticipated, and much later than we'd planned, we were parked up in Ambleside - tourism capital of the Lakes. It was gone lunchtime and most certainly a long time since breakfast. We were starving and desperate for some decent food. Fortunately, we know the town well and knew that in Ambleside a decent meal is never far away - about which, more next time!

Ravenglass - Romans and Railways

Ravenglass is a small village perched precariously between the mountains of the western Lake District and the Irish Sea. Once, a very long time ago it was a very important place but these days you'd be hard pressed to call it a backwater. In truth it's little more now that a handful of houses and a train station - which for the likes of me and Mrs Snail is the essence of its attraction.

The village dates back to the Romans, who maintained a naval base here in what was - at the time - the large sheltered harbour at the mouth of the River Esk. Evidence for the Romano-British presence is still easily visible; our pitch, on the Ravenglass Camping and Caravanning Club site, was within five minutes walk of a reasonably well preserved Roman Bath House and a slightly less obvious Roman fort.  In the years since the legions left, the importance of the port began to diminish, as the Esk slowly but steadily washed silt down from the hills and the harbour silted up. These days there are only a handful of small boats calling Ravenglass home and most of these seemed to spend most of the time we were there resting forlornly on sand banks some way from the water.

Still, I wouldn't want you to get the impression that the place is in any way forlorn or forgotten - because it isn't. In fact, it's rather beautiful, and in spite of its "off the beaten track" location in the far west of the Lake District, far from the crowded stomping grounds of Ambleside and Windermere, there is a huge amount to do here. 

There is the previously mentioned Roman fort and bath house - both of which can be visited at any time, and a few minutes walk further on from there stands Muncaster Castle. Still the home of the Pennington family, who began work on the place in 1208, the castle stands on Roman foundations and is purportedly haunted. Reading the leaflet and perusing the website, we got the impression that this was a smaller scale, more intimate version of Warwick Castle. Had we been around the area longer we would probably have gone and checked it out, but for now it remains on our "to do next time we're in the area" list.

One Ravenglass attraction we couldn't resist, however, was the brilliant Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway also known as "La'al Ratty".  This charming little Railway was originally opened with a full sized three foot gauge track all the way back in 1875 (on 24th, as the website helpfully points out, although the first passenger were apparently not carried until that November, because the line was actually intended to bring Iron Ore from workings near Boot at the top of the valley down to the coast) and, it must be said, things did not initially go well.

It turns out that there wasn't all that much iron ore to be had there, and the line was declared bankrupt as early as 1877 - although it staggered on into the early twentieth century, finally closing in 1913. All was not lost, however. In 1915 the line was purchased by two narrow gauge railway engineers who wanted to test their pocket sized locomotives under the testing conditions provided by the journey up Eskdale. I presume they had business reasons for doing this and they weren't just pursuing their giant train set fantasies in the middle of the Great War. Whatever, by 1917 their narrow gauge tracks ran to the top of the line and the railway began to come back to life.

To cut a long story short, "stuff happened" and while the purely industrial side of the railway never really took off, the passenger services proved popular. Although there was a bit of a scare at the end of the fifties, the future of the line now seems secure - something I'm immensely pleased about because a ride on this little railway line is an excellent way to see Eskdale.

We walked to the Ravenglass Station from our pitch on the C&CC site - it's less than 500 yards - and bought our return tickets to the Dalegarth for Boot station at the top of the line. These are a seriously good deal, let me tell you. For a mere £12.80 an adult can ride up and down the line all day, hopping on and off as you please. By virtue of staying at the C&CC site was also qualified for a 10% discount - and if that wasn't enough we were also presented with a 50% off voucher for the Ullswater Steamers, which we didn't get a change to use on this trip out, but it's valid for a full year, so we'll doubtless get around to it.

The little blue steam train "Wroxham Broad" (actually on loan from Bure Valley Railway Company) was waiting on Platform 3 with a collection of fully enclosed carriages - somewhat reminiscent of the type that used to be pulled by British Rail in the seventies, only much much smaller, some semi open carriages, which had a roof but no doors or windows, and one fully open carriage. Now. This was Easter Monday 2013. It was -2 degrees. Clearly we went for the fully open carriage.

What? Look, we were on holiday and tourists are the only tribe of people who will willingly pay full price for a train ticket and then choose to travel third class because "it's a more authentic experience". It might have been cold, but we were equipped with hats and coats, and after what had felt like fourteen or fifteen months trapped below relentlessly overcast skies there was no way we were going to sit indoors on a sunny day.

So we took our seats in the little carriage and as the very enthusiastic young Train Guard blew a blast on his whistle and the plucky little engine tooted its whistle in reply we chugged slowly out of the station on our voyage up the dale.

It might well have been the first day of April, but it was the first day of April after the coldest March since records began, so the hills that towered above us were still capped with snow. As the train sped up the wind chill increased and our faces - the only exposed skin we had - were stinging. Some warmth seemed to be offered by the plumes of steam belching forth from the engine. Logic tells me that we couldn't possibly have felt any heat from the rapidly dissipating cloud of steam, and I'm prepared to believe that it was entirely psychosomatic , but whether the benefits were real or imagined that fluffy cloud of water vapour was a powerful comfort on a cold day.

It took about forty minutes to reach the top of the line, travelling through some spectacular countryside with truly unique views across Eskdale. We got to the top of the line, watched the engine turn around on a very simple human powered turntable, sat for a bit basking in the sun, then headed back down the line. That was it really. It doesn't sound like much perhaps, but I can honestly say that it was one of the most enjoyable mornings I've spent in a while. Should you ever find yourself in the area I heartily recommend it.