Lake District Bit and Bobs, England

Here's some stuff from the Lakes District that didn't merit their own posts.

Keswick is one of the little towns in the area that has a nice museum/art gallery and a pencil museum. We thought the pencil museum might not be interesting to the children and the art gallery/museum was closed for renovations, so we had a snack in town instead. We found a fun shop by going through this passage:

We didn't see any packhorses in the court, just a colorful name I suppose.  Yes, sometimes L prefers her jacket to be backwards.

Grasmere is famous for its gingerbread shop. In addition to local poet William Wordsworth, of course. The gingerbread shop was started by Sarah Nelson in 1815 (when Wordsworth lived there) and the recipe has been handed down from owner to owner faithfully for two hundred years. It still tastes great. The shop didn't have any parking so my wife ran in and we tried the stuff back at our hotel.

J-approved gingerbread

Proof that it's the real thing

We had a brief stop in Windermere (the town, not the lake) to get some tourist information. We saw a fancy hotel on a hilltop and a fancy store selling all sorts of housewares.

Windermere Hotel with the Lakeland sign and the train station

The streets are typical town thoroughfares--slightly narrow and largely charming.

A pub we didn't stop at

Typical busy street