Howgill
After breakfast, we headed west to Windemere and the Lake District for coffee. The coffee was nice but the town itself was very much another tourist town (like Byron Bay). We headed north over Kirkstone Pass to Glenridding and Lake Ullswater before joining the M6 once again at Penrith. It's easy to see why the Lake District is so popular with tourists as it is gorgeous country.
The Lakes District
We stuck with the M6 until we reached Carlisle where we headed east to have a look at Hadrian's Wall. After lunch, at a pub in Greenhead, we backtracked to Birdoswald Fort and had a bit of a wander around the ruins. Built in AD138 it is one of the best preserved of the 16 forts along Hadrian's Wall (not that there is a lot of it left). The fort is situated in a commanding position on a triangular spur of land bounded by cliffs to the south and east overlooking the River Irthing. In Roman times, the fort was known as Banna (Latin for "spur" or "tongue"), reflecting the geography of the site.
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| Birdoswald Fort |
As the day was now getting on it was back to the car and off to Scotland and our final leg to Edinburgh where we have a 2 bedroom house to ourselves in Leith (a suburb of Edinburgh). Soup for tea and an opportunity for Cate to get organised. We put her on a plane to London tomorrow afternoon ready for her flight back to Australia.
