London to the Lakes District

July 1: We were up and ready to move by 8:45 am after a "full English breakfast" at the Mentone.  We walked ourselves to the Euston Train Station with our four suitcases.  We parked in front of the big train board, waiting for the platform information to come up.  Twenty minutes before departure, the platform number came up - number 13, an potentially ominous sign.  We hustled off to try to find the unreserved cars.  There were no appropriate labels and after hauling and stowing our stuff onto the last car, Betsy asked the dining car attendants where the unreserved seats were.   The signs on the cars only gave us two choices - first class and "standard."  It turned out that the first two cars in standard were unreserved and the rest of "standard" was reserved.  So, we hustled back through the cars to find seats in an appropriate car.  We dropped our packs and ran back outside to the previous car, retrieved our luggage, carried it back to our new car, and stowed it.  By this time, we were sweating profusely but we had two seats together.  The train departed moments later.

The ride to Oxenholme, on the south east edge of  the Lakes District, was uneventful.  We passed through Birmingham and Manchester, and several smaller cities before reaching Oxenholme.  We quickly disembarked and just as quickly jumped on a train on the opposite of the platform.  It was the 'express' train to Windermere.and we had only a short wait before this train departed.  Note, Oxenholme is just south of the larger city of Kendall for those looking at a map.  The ride to Windermere was a 'local,' with several intermediate stops, and we arrived without difficulty.

Once in Windermere, I went to retrieve the two packages of hiking gear we had mailed from Fort William after the West Highland Way hike.  The mailman complained to me that we shouldn't have mailed parcels to them, since they were a small office and "if we allowed everyone to do this, then there would be no room for us to work."  Interestingly, he pointed out in a brochure that for the time they held the packages, I owed them 13 pounds.  I didn't argue, paid the money, and walked back to the train station.  Betsy had snagged a very friendly taxi driver, who was helpful and talkative, to drive us to Ambleside.  The trip took a while although it was only 5 miles.  There was road construction and a continuous flow of tourist traffic on a Friday afternoon.  The driver gave us a brochure on the local bus system and pointed out a number of sights along the way.  He drove us right to the door and while I opened our home for the next 28 days, he carried all of the luggage and boxes down to the front entry.

Our new accommodation, 1 Loughrigg View, Low Gale, Ambleside, Cumbria, United Kingdom, LA22 0BB (the address) or "Walkers Retreat," is a ground floor flat with a utility room (washer/dryer), kitchen, and living/dining room with a view of Ambleside roofs and Loughrigg Fell.  The bathroom is behind the kitchen and, six steps up are two opposing bedrooms.  The amenities look good, it is clean, and it appears to be well equipped for cooking.  We unpacked, which felt satisfying.  The flat is just above a main street in Ambleside which we can reach by a private footpath.  Although we can hear traffic, it is screened from view by banks of shrubbery.

We went off to town, going downhill by way of the path, to one of about 3 main parallel streets.  We found the largest (it is rather small) grocery place (Tesco's) and bought breakfast supplies.  We also found an interesting "early 1, 2 or 3-course early dinner option" at The Lily and returned there to eat after stowing our groceries.  It turns out Lily's is one of about 7 pubs in the town.  Dinner was fine and we walked a bit around town before calling it a night.