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Attractions

Lake District History & Now: Axe Heads to SatNavs

February 21, 2012

Today’s title reflects just some of the eclectic content below, with ancient axe heads, charcoal burning, water-powered fulling mills, train crashes, a Roman helmet, today’s forests, map reading skills and even an international treaty. Last week I wrote about books on Lake District history and finished up with some thoughts on its future. Today I [...]

Lake District History and the Future

February 14, 2012

I was writing a piece on my “Lake District in Books” site when it occurred to me how much material I’d written there over recent months referring to the history of the region. This post is substantially a survey of things I’ve written there in the past, brought together for readers of the Around-England blog. [...]

Barnard Castle and the Bowes Museum

February 7, 2012

Last weekend we paid an unscheduled visit to Barnard Castle. Our normal pattern when driving over the A66 between Cumbria and County Durham has been to fly past at 60 to 70 miles per hour on the way to or from somewhere or other. This time, however, a glance at the fuel gauge said quite [...]

River Eden near Appleby on a Wintry Afternoon

January 17, 2012

Three more shots of the beautiful Eden Valley. Before reaching the centre of the town the River Eden passes Bongate (the place where in ancient times the ‘bondsmen’ used to live), down below the cliff where Appleby Castle stands proud. Here is a cold January midday shot of the river, reduced in level from what [...]

Still More Wordsworth Places in the Lake District

January 3, 2012

Recently I’ve written several times about Lake District places associated with William Wordsworth, the great nineteenth century romantic poet. In addition to describing a visit to Wordsworth House in Cockermouth and seeing the tremendous work that has been done to recover from the devastating floods of November 2009, I posted a further article summarising the [...]

Arley Hall and Gardens, Cheshire

December 7, 2011

Recently I promised to include weekly items on attractive places further south than my recent Cumbrian and Pennine posts. Regulars here will have noticed very little activity of any kind since then. I’ve been working on a major new feature of the site (secret! husshhh!) to be launched shortly and was rather distracted from routine [...]

Going to the Wordsworth House? Which one?

December 6, 2011

Wordsworth House, Cockermouth “We’re going to the Wordsworth House this afternoon.” “Oh good. You’ll enjoy that. Which one?” It’s easy to imagine that kind of conversation between Lake District visitors over a lunch table. Currently there are three houses with strong Wordsworth connections open to the public, and before long the three will be four. [...]

Our Winter Visitors

November 23, 2011

During the summer months the North of England welcomes visitors in their hundreds of thousands from all around the globe. Those human visitors drop off after September but we then start to see a different kind of visitor, flying in from colder climes. This morning I spotted two reports of White Fronted Geese arriving from [...]

The River Eden at Appleby This Afternoon

November 17, 2011

The sunshine attracted me away from the keyboard after lunch today. My target, with cameras, was the River Eden at Appleby (or, to give it its full name, Appleby-in-Westmorland). What the warplanes circling and thundering overhead were aiming at, in addition to making white trails in the almost cloudless sky, is anyone’s guess. Ignoring the [...]

Brockholes, Preston – “An Unreserved Reserve”

November 11, 2011

Brockholes Nature Reserve just outside Preston is a remarkable initiative of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. I am old enough to remember the building of Britain’s first motorway. And it wasn’t the M1; it was the M6 Preston bypass. For almost forty years I would regularly drive the seven or eight miles from home to join [...]

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