Devoke Water + Muncaster Castle

The next day we went ahead with our original plan of hiking in Devoke Water and visiting Muncaster Castle in the afternoon. But first we decided to brave the steepest road in England.

The start of the path at Devoke Water

The path was very, very muddy ...

... and we had to make quite a few detours. The views were quite lovely, though.

Halfway we reached the river and couldn't find a way to cross it, so we decided to turn back

S. turned out to be quite the little hiker ...

Muncaster Castle is known for its Owl Trust Center, and is an amazing place to spend the day with kids. We arrived just in time to watch the "Meet the birds" event at 2:30 PM, then visited the castle interior. Afterwards we went for some tea and cake at the little tea room at the back of the owl centre where we met the castle owner Mr. Pennington and had a really nice chat with him. We vowed to come back in the Spring to watch the flowers in bloom.

 

Coniston and its Old Man

On Sunday it was my birthday and what better way to celebrate than by hiking the Old Man of Coniston ?
But first we decided to explore the Coniston Water pier and the nearby Brantwood manor, the home of John Ruskin (i'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of John Ruskin before, but he was a man of many talents).

:: at the Coniston pier

:: view from the gardens of Brantwood

:: Brantwood manor

:: a very lovely quilt

We then returned home for a quick lunch and someone had to take a nap ...

 

Around 2 PM we finally decided to start our hike up to the Old Man of Coniston. The are several routes up to the summit, but the one we took was this one.

Hike: old Man of Coniston
Distance: 12.4 km
Ascent: 985 m
Time: 5.5 hours

I think it took us about 3.5 hours to go up and 2 hours to come down. We got lost for a while after reaching Dow Crag and missed the path to the right that would take us to the summit, but it was not difficult to get back on track. We were lucky that the weather was nice and the visibility was good, but when we reached the summit it was already getting a little foggy.

:: Goats Water

:: peanut butter sandwich break
:: view of Goats Water climbing up towards Dow Crag

:: yay, we reached the summit !

:: the most amazing views of Coniston and the surrounding lakes

:: the old copper mines

Keswick

:: view from our bedroom window in the morning

:: the cottage from the outside

This day was a total disaster. We were on our way to the west part of the lakes (towards Devoke Water and Muncaster) when we had a flat tire about 10 km from Coniston (on the road to Broughton in Furness), literally in the middle of nowhere but a few sheep to keep us company.
The rental car agency (Sixt) took a long time to solve the issue, and only 4 hours later did we manage to have our car towed into Workington (which was about an hour and a half from where we were)

I was almost 5 PM when we finally got everything fixed, and in order to make something out of such a dreadful day we decided to visit Keswick on our way down to Coniston.

Keswick is a lovely little town, it can be a bit crowded during the day but at the end of the afternoon it was just peaceful enough for us to enjoy it.

:: filled with delicious little team rooms and coffee shops (but beware, most close at 5 PM)

:: we were still able to grab a pot of tea, some cake and toast here...

And on our drive down we had some of the most amazing views from the road ...