March

Hopefully we are going to be able to reopen shortly after Easter which will be good news for everyone, it has been a long winter. However there are signs of Spring, the snowdrops have looked beautiful for a long while but are now being taken over by the crocus and daffodils. I walked through Loweswater churchyard yesterday and the spring flowers in amongst the graves were lovely.

The sign at the junction by the Kirkstile that Wainwright referred to as ‘a negative signpost’ in his section on Melbreak suddenly disappeared one day. We were rather worried for a while wondering what had happened to it as it is such an iconic sign. However a couple of weeks later it reappeared looking very smart and clean. The sign at the end of the lane has now been taken off, it must be the local council having a clean up.

Over the past week or two we have had some beautiful still and misty mornings. It’s lovely to go down to one of the lakes early when it’s like this.  There are often swans gently gliding around on Loweswater and one morning I saw two red squirrels chasing each other through the woods.

It’s also nice to go up a bit to look down on the mist over the lake and Brackenthwaite Hows is an ideal place for this.

During lockdown several of the local groups have gone online with Zoom presentations, it has been good to see local friends who you otherwise may not have seen and there have been wide ranging presentations including one from Rosie, a local girl running from Loweswater to Mongolia highlighting climate activism. Unfortunately she had to temporarily halt her journey in Bulgaria and return home because of the pandemic. At the other end of the timescale we had a fascinating lecture by the history society on local Neolithic settlements in the valley which are quite extensive and there’s even evidence of stone age ‘cups’ on the large rock in a field towards Loweswater.

Anyway I had better come back to the present time and get on with preparing to re-open the cottages.

Take care

Joan