Ancient Delights

Sorry that these post are rather out of date! We have been travelling long distances most days to get to where we wanted to be so haven't had much time to stop in libraries along the way. But we found some internet where we are parked up tonight - in a wind swept corner on the Isle of Skye, though this story is about when we were still in England. Keep looking out for a new post about Scotland soon!

The Lake District

The farm on which I grew up in Nelson is named Rivington, and our ancestors originally came out of England in the 1840’s on one of the boats to the newly purchased land where my parents still live today. On our way up to Scotland we found we were in the vicinity to visit what we assume must be the Rivington of England that our farm was named after. It was a small little village consisting mostly of farmland, but with some very grand buildings, including a manor and a Pike, (a large conical monument on top of a mountain) a church, cafe, some gorgeous old stone houses and an outdoor adventure center. Amazingly it also had a full scale replica of Leeds castle just down the road! I’m not sure why, as we didn’t go there. It is also home to a big reservoir created in the 1800’s. We ended up staying the night nestled in the forest on the road to the big manor where many people were going to walk their dogs and watch the deer that emerged out of the woods in the dusk. It was rather a romantic setting - feeling exactly like the England I had always pictured as a child, and it felt even more special to consider it was most probably the home of my ancestors.

A view across the fields at Rivington

A pub at Rivington (though not the "black Horse Hotel" )

Incidentally, further down the road was a pub called the ‘Black Horse Hotel’ which was the name of a hotel that once was on the road opposite our farm but was burnt down long before mine or my father’s time. I think, if I remember correctly, that my Great-Grandmother worked there as a barmaid before marrying my Great-grandfather. So seeing another old Inn in Rivington with that same name brings the potential higher of the original Wastney's coming from there.

So many times I’ve wished for a skill of being able to look at a place and see it’s history living out in front of me, even just a glimpse would be good, but I’ve just got to make do with my severely limited imagination.

From there we made our way to the Lake District which I’ve heard for as long as I can remember that is the most beautiful part of England and the place to be in Summer. Well, it certainly is gorgeous (though of course quite a lot like NZ but without all the mosquitos!) and it turned out it was definetly the place to be as there were tourists everywhere and traffic jams lining the roads and main streets of town. But lucky for us we had asked for advice from a local about where the best place was to visit and where we could also camp for the night and she suggested Lake Coniston. It was a scarily narrow hedge-lined road that took us there, the walls and roof of the camper scraping the brambles on either side to pass through. The lake was long and narrow and on the side we were on almost entirely enclosed by towering oaks. We found a spot to park which was carved out of the forest and Josh soon got his kayak out and took the girls in turns to the little island in the lake, that reportedly is the very same island that Swallows and Amazons was written about! While I was making dinner, the younger three girls had been creating a wonderful imaginary world in the forest and in the morning they got up earlier than us to go and play some more before we had to leave. Such cherished memories for the girls at that mystical looking lake, with a famous story to draw inspiration from.

Lake Coniston

We stayed another night at the lakes, although we didn’t do too much as it was pretty wet and so cold! (It’s been a bit of a shock after our weeks of near 40 degrees!) We did climb up a mountain for a view, and Josh got his kayak out again of course, and we also had a wee fire on the beach at another lake when it was dark, where we had a cosy reading of ‘The Horse and His Boy’ (the third book of the ‘Narnia’ series that we are reading together.)

It has been so cold and rainy here (feels like NZ in winter!) that we’ve found ourselves greatful that we have to cover quite a vast distance in the camper where it’s warm and (mostly) dry in a short time. But we did fit in seeing some standing stones called Castlerigg outside of Keswick and also Hadrian’s wall (near Carlisle) and the remains of a large fort made by the Romans to guard the wall from the ‘wild people of the north’. They were stationed there for over 300 years!

Castlerigg Stones - The man in the distance looks like he is scratching his head with the mystery of it. ;)

At Hadrian's Wall Roman fort remains with the 18th century farmhouse in the back ground.

Hadrian's wall.
This is the longest surviving stretch of the wall. Of course it used to be much taller than this to keep out those wild Scots!