February 2024

The start of a new season, the annual maintenance work and updates have been done. I’ve had my Visit England assessment, maintained my Five Star, Gold Award status including my 100% rating on cleanliness so I’m ready to go!

Walking round the muddy lanes despite the weather, one is aware of the arrival of Spring. The catkins have been noticeably bright and a thrush is singing its heart out in one of the tall trees.

Loweswater Church yard has been covered in snowdrops.

There is now a blue carpet of crocus and the daffodils are not far behind.

It won’t be too long until we start seeing lambs locally, I did see some bouncing around in a field as I drove over towards the coast last week. In the meantime Sean brings a smile to all our faces.

January 2024

Last Sunday was a gloriously sunny, but cold and icy, day and I went up my first fell of the year which obviously had to be Low Fell directly behind Foulsyke: the view down Crummock Water was magnificent.

Later that day I thought about some of the many things that make Loweswater so special which prompted me to have a nostalgic look through some of my old photos.

The view towards the lake and the fells beyond can not be bettered.

I walk the dog down to Crummock Water several times a week and have taken many lovely photos from the shore: there are also many views I would have liked to have taken but didn’t have my camera with me.

January is the time to start looking for snowdrops, the first sign that Spring may be on its way.

These are soon followed by the daffodils and in May we have the bluebells.

The herdwick sheep always make me smile even when they are visiting my garden looking for something to eat.

Wishing you a happy New Year.

Joan

October

We are now well into October, the autumn colours are developing and the geese are flying noisily overhead in large V shapes. The rainbow picture which I took a couple of days ago while walking the dog is indicative of the range of weather we have been experiencing recently, the bridge at Crummock below shows another aspect of it.

On a somewhat grey day last week I walked with some friends from Spout Force through the forest to Lords Seat and back over Broom Fell. Even though the light was not good the view towards the silhouettes of the distant fells was impressive.

One of my all time favourite place to visit is Watendlath, it’s a lovely walk over the fell from Rosthwaite with a stop for coffee and a rock bun at the tea shop.

Judith Paris of the the Rogue Herries books by Hugh Walpole was said to live here, I think it probably looks a little different today. Below is a picture of the cobbles over the old packhorse bridge.

Today I walked to another tarn, Easedale Tarn, from Grasmere, it is a long time since I have been there but it was a lovely walk in glorious sunshine.

The rock in the photo below is by the tarn and apparently there used to be a small café for walkers beside this many, many years years ago.

 

For those of you interested in what has been happening to the footpath to Pottergill along the woods behind Foulsyke, the owner who had totally wrecked the path by bulldozing a wide track through to carry vehicles has recently lost his appeal to the enforcement order requiring him to return the path to its previous state.

August

 

The school holidays have been a busy time and I don’t seem to have had the opportunity to think about taking many photos. Here is a small selection of happy snappies to give a flavour of the month.

The lakeshore path around Crummock on a morning dog walk

Jet Patcher waiting to start work on the potholes!

Buttermere sheep

Shearing time

A cosmos in my front garden.

Sunset on Grasmoor

July 2023

One evening in the very hot weather we had last month I took Max for a run along St. Bee’s beach where he cooled himself down in a pool after charging around chasing his ball along the beach.

Looking through my photos for the past month they are all  either very sunny with bright blue skies or cloudy and grey.

This picture of Buttermere was one of the latter but it was so still and calm that the colour didn’t seem to matter.

Once it started to rain properly we had an invasion of tiny frogs, they were hopping about in the field, crossing the road and several even hopped into the kitchen.

Cumbria is known for its natural beauty and its lakes and fells. However there is lot of human history here as well, I’ve written in earlier blogs about Neolithic remains and there is much Roman history. We are just south of Hadrian’s Wall and Carlisle was the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. This summer there has been an archaeological dig at Carlisle Cricket Club of what is thought to be a Roman bathhouse which I went to see on a cycle ride round the Carlisle area. Earlier in the season two Roman god head sculptures were unearthed there which were said to be ‘unique and priceless’. On our visit amongst other things we were shown were semi-precious stones that had been found in the drains system.

It’s been a bit of a month for history. Cockermouth Castle, a home of Lord Egremont, is open  to the public on a handful of days a year and I was lucky enough to be given a ticket for one of these. It was a fascinating visit, much of the castle is in ruins but sufficient still stands to help you envisage what it must have been like in times gone by. The dungeons were still intact!

Finally, coming back to the present day and Foulsyke, I am including a picture of the flower pots in the courtyard which have enjoyed and benefitted from the sunshine although I have had to provide them with a lot of water!

 

 

 

June 2023

It is a very warm and humid day so I have decided to stay inside and write this month’s blog.

Meanwhile outside there are some house martins trying very hard to build nests under the guttering. They haven’t done so for several years and have also ignored the boxes I put up: the sparrows however were delighted with them. Swallows are nesting somewhere in the store behind the cottages and they are also trying to build a nest under Buttermere canopy, though this is not such a good idea as it rarely holds for long. I am wondering if I am getting an increase in nest building because the newly created wild life ponds in front of Foulsyke are providing suitable mud.

The ponds in the field behind the cottages now look very established and the yellow iris have been flowering. There are also a lot of damsel flies.

One of my guests in Buttermere kindly sent me this lovely picture of what I believe is a vole who is a daily visitor on the bird feeder.

On my morning dog walks down to Crummock I regularly see a dipper on the river from the bridge by the weir. One day I had my camera with me and he very obligingly came up onto the wall.

I have been promising myself one of my favourite walks for some time so last week my friend Judy and I went to Borrowdale and walked over to Dock Tarn and Watendlath: it was as beautiful as ever.

I have also recently revisited Long Meg and her Daughters, which is the third largest surviving stone circle in England and the largest in Cumbria.

There are some stone ring carvings on Long Meg.

There is a vast amount of neolithic history here and I’m told archaeologists recognise 65 stone circles of varying sizes in Cumbria, more than in any other comparable area in the UK. Long Meg is well worth a visit and there is now a car park nearby.

May 2023

Buttermere Cottage garden this afternoon.

Ever since I started this blog in 2011, there are two items that I always write about in May; Rannerdale bluebells and hearing the first cuckoo.

The bluebells are a short and beautiful walk through the Rannerdale valley with flowers carpeting both sides of the valley. They are a very special sight but sadly we are told they are suffering from their own popularity: hopefully there is now an increasing awareness of  the long term damage that can be caused by visitors not staying on the paths.

A Rannerdale Herdy!

Although Rannerdale is the most well known area for bluebells in the valley, there are many other places that have eye-catching shows, some just a display by a road or on a fellside. I can see the blue on Brackenthwaite Hows from my garden.

It is always interesting how flowers vary from year to year. This year the primroses were outstanding and so is the gorse and hawthorn. It is also an excellent year for stitchwort, a rather retiring flower that always seems to in the shadow of other flowers.

This year I heard the first cuckoo on 29 April but my neighbour had heard it a few days earlier. All the birds are very busy at the moment. We have lots of swallows swooping around and some are nesting in the store round the back and my front hedge is home to many families of sparrows. We have been visited on a couple of nights by a baby owl sitting on a roof – hope his mother knew where he was. I also had a more unusual visitor to the garden, a red legged partridge who obligingly posed on the wall for me.

And last but not least the squirrels are about at the moment and one of my guests last week passed on this beautiful picture of one running up the grass behind Crummock Cottage.

 

April 2023

Looking through my pictures over the past month most of them seem related to the arrival of Spring. Daffodils are everywhere including in the churchyard.

Cockermouth, with its association with Wordsworth and his famous poem, had  displays of daffodils made from all manner of materials everywhere. Even Mayo in Main Street was decorated.

Primroses are now out along the road side verges, I liked this picture I took from the Loweswater road with Low Fell in the background.

It was a sunny morning today and as I walked along by the river at Crummock there were swallows flying overhead, the first I’ve seen this year. We are now also seeing the lambs out in the fields. This lamb and its mother stayed still long enough for me to take a picture of them as I came home from my morning dog walk.

It has been a beautiful day.

 

March 2023

Last Tuesday was gloriously sunny but bitterly cold so my friend Judy and I decided to do a walk we had been promising ourselves for ages; Cold Fell and Matty Benn’s bridge. The way was fairly pathless at times so it was one for such a clear day. We got some amazing views from the top of Cold Fell and could see out over the Solway to the Isle of Man. It was said you could see Blackpool Tower but the wind turbines were muddying the view beyond Black Combe.

Matty Benn’s bridge was tucked away off the main track as we headed back to the Cold Fell road. It lived up to expectation. It is a very narrow and beautifully formed stone arch bridge  with no sides crossing a small gorge. The story goes that Matty Benn, a farmer in the mid-1800s, used to ride her horse over the bridge on her way home after she had been to market and a local inn!

The predicted snow arrived overnight on Thursday and we awoke to a winter wonderland. Even my WW1 Tommy in the garden got a new coat.

The obvious pictures to take in front of Foulsyke are towards the lake but the sun was so bright in the morning I had to point my camera towards Whiteside which was looking very white indeed.

The local herdies were tucking into their feed as I took the dog for his morning walk.

In the late afternoon I walked down to the lake where the views were absolutely stunning.

 

 

February 2023

The snowdrops are out, always a sign that it will not be too long until spring is properly with us. The birds are starting to sing and the woodpeckers are drumming on the trees in the woods.

It is also time to open the Cottages for the 2023 season. January has been busy checking everything, decorating, cleaning, replacing where necessary and making sure that everything is in good working order. We had our annual VisitEngland inspection in November, the inspector was very happy with everything and we retained our Five Star rating with Gold Award in all cottages scoring an important 100% on cleanliness.

It seems a little while since I last wrote anything although I had made a few notes and lined up some pics from walks. The most recent was yesterday when I saw the first frogspawn on the track up Mosedale en route for Melbreak, no more pics from the day as the clag was down.

It was rather different the day after New Year’s Day when I had my first picnic of the year by Derwentwater.

Two weeks later we had a fall of snow and you just couldn’t miss the opportunity of walking on the fells. Here is the view from Darling Fell across to the aptly named Whiteside.

Later in the month I had a rather different walk with some local friends. We followed the coffin route from Workington to Camerton described by Alan Cleaver in his book ‘The Corpse Roads of Cumbria’  It was fascinating. The start in Workington is marked by two stone crosses built into a house wall on Cross Hill and then follows down to the river via Workington Hall and Mill Fields. The walk then continues along the riverside to Camerton church.

And to add to our enjoyment we saw two little egrets by the river – amazing.