okay then guys and well for those of you that watched my last video
you will know that i'm at oxenholme railway station which is the gateway to the lakes
and i'm going to be taking another train now on the branch line from here
down to windermere and i'm not sure what i'm going to be doing in windermere when i get
there i've got about four and a half hours to kill i was supposed to be going on the lake on a
steamboat but they rang me up the other day and said it was cancelled because of the weather
which as you can see is really terrible isn't it so anyway i'm not sure what happened there but
that means i've got to find something else to do so i'll tell you what why don't you come with me
we'll get on the train we'll end up in windermere and see where i end up and
what i intend to be doing for the next few hours i'll see you again when i get there cheers for now
the train to windermere uses platform 3 which has this rather quaint cover over it now as you can
see it was very quiet with only a few nesting birds to keep me company until the train arrived
and here it was a class 195 that had come all the way from manchester airport believe it or not
and on boarding i had to use a different door as half the
carriage was barriered off for the exclusive use of the conductor
it was reasonably busy on the train itself i suspect quite a few day trippers had made the
journey from manchester and why not it was a lovely day for it..... "this train is the northern service to windermere"
i liked the train it was modern and spacious also northern had it looking really clean inside and out
we passed through kendal and a couple of smaller
villages before reaching the end of the line at windermere
you could tell this used to be a much larger station a lot of the former buildings now
house a supermarket so it looks like only a small part of the old platforms are now used
if you have any more info on this by the way please let me know in the comments below
anyway much to my delight there was an open top bus waiting outside
i'd never been on an open top bus before so i just had to give it a go
I had a quick chat with the driver about where i was going how much it was etc
and i was sold obviously i headed straight for the top deck
this is alright isn't it just got on this open top bus which was waiting for me right
outside the railway station £8.50 for the day get on get off when you want
driver explained everything for me which was great
so i'm going to sit on this for a bit and see where it takes me and see you in a bit
the service you want is the 599 operated by stagecoach and it's basically a hop-on
hop-off kind of thing it heads south towards bowness after leaving the station
and the first stop for me was braithwaite fold where i would take a short walk to bowness nab
where i'd noticed that car ferry was operating
okay guys well i told you i'd get out on the water today and i'm here at bowness nab waiting for the
ferry which will take me across the lake to the other side i don't know what that bit's called
to be honest if you do please let me know in the comments below but anyway it takes
about 10 minutes yeah and it takes cars and passengers passenger fare each way is one pound
which is great so i'm going to wait for it to come back and then take a little trip on it see you in a bit
so of course typically it had just left when i got there so i had to wait until it came back and then
basically just walked on with a few cyclists and cars interestingly there has been a ferry
on this side for more than 500 years the earliest crafts being nothing more than rowing boats really
and the current ferry named mallard has been operating since 1990
now it's a cable ferry and it takes around 10 minutes to cover the 490 meters across the lake
it holds up to 18 cars and it wasn't particularly busy today
i would imagine there can be long wait times in a normal summer season
the waiting areas on the ferry were closed as you would expect so
we just all congregated near the front of the boat
before reaching the other side i was treated to some fantastic views
and a couple of hawk trainers that were making their way up the lake
windermere i should tell you is the largest natural lake in england 11 miles long and one
mile wide at its widest point now because it's so long and narrow it's known geographically as
a ribbon lake and was formed by a retreating ice sheet at the end of the last ice age
it has 19 islands and apart from this ferry also has a couple of passenger only ferries
during the summer season and also a steamer service which runs the length and breadth of
the lake during normal times now as with many tourist areas it really became popular after
the arrival of the kendal and windermere branch line in 1847
after disembarking i had a look on an information board which was just to the left of the road and i
noticed that there was an interesting tower on the hillside nearby called claife viewing
station so i decided to make my way towards it via a well-worn path through the woods
after passing through an archway in a castellated wall the track led up
to the viewing station which was basically a tower that had fallen
into disrepair but has been consolidated and made accessible again by the national trust
the building was constructed in the 1790s and you'll note the tinted glass in the windows that
overlook the lake originally the stained glass would have been used to recreate the landscape
under different seasonal conditions in the 1830s and 40s the tower was used by wealthy visitors who
would make their way up the path at night lit by chinese lanterns it must have been a very
atmospheric place in those days but unfortunately the novelty had begun to wear off by the end of
the 19th century as i guess people were by then starting to discover and travel to places further afield
i had some lunch amongst the daffodils which reminded me actually that there was somewhere
i'd really wanted to visit for ages and maybe just maybe the bus could take me there
i headed back across the lake on the ferry paid another pound
and made my way back to the car park where another double decker was waiting to depart to grasmere
and of course the most famous ex-resident of grasmere just happens to be a certain william wordsworth
well technically wordsworth lived in dove cottage which everybody knows i would imagine
and that's just outside grasmere then he went to allan bank
and then rydal mount near ambleside well he lived near enough anyway and i wasn't going
to let that stand in the way of my own personal spur of the moment pilgrimage
the bus made its way back up the eastern side of lake windermere stopping several times
on the way most notably in ambleside which is the other large town on the lake i guess and
it takes about 40 minutes to get to grasmere from windermere railway station so if you're going to
do it you need to allow yourself a similar amount of time to get back if you have a train to catch
and in terms of grasmere itself the most significant location is the church of st
oswald's where wordsworth, his wife, sister and
other members of his family are buried it's a lovely peaceful spot in a beautiful churchyard
and there's also a daffodil garden to walk around and just really have a nice calm time i suppose
the frequency of the buses is about every 20 minutes
so there's always another one not too far away
i made my way back to the station and managed to
meet the train which was waiting on the platform as i arrived
i managed to get back on the train which is taking me to oxenholme and then i'm catching the
avanti west coast back down to crewe that was really good four and a half hours went
by like a flash that did. i did loads of stuff i managed to get out on the water on lake windermere
and an open bus tour up to grasmere which was really nice anyway guys thank you very
much for watching this i hope you've enjoyed it and if you have please give me a thumbs up
feel free to make any comments you like and a subscribe would be really appreciated so until
next time guys the train's just going and i will catch you in another video soon cheers for now