Northern England: Wheeling through Barrow

  • barrow-026.jpgWith most of the ports on this cruise — Dublin, Edin­burgh, Copen­hagen, St. Peters­burg — the ques­tion wasn’t “What do you do?” but “What don’t you do?” Know­ing what to leave off the itin­er­ary can keep you from run­ning around try­ing to do it all. But that didn’t seem like it was the prob­lem with Barrow-in-Furness, Eng­land. Look­ing over the list of cities in the itin­er­ary, lit­tle Bar­row in the north­west of Eng­land looked like the 100-to-1 bet in the Ken­tucky Derby. But then there were intrigu­ing bits of infor­ma­tion about the coun­try­side pro­vid­ing home and inspi­ra­tion to both Wordsworth and Beat­rix Pot­ter, and so we opted for one of the two excur­sions offered — “A Scenic Tour of Cumbria.”

    And scenic it cer­tainly was. Almost worth being crip­pled for the rest of my life.

    My fault, really. I for­got the con­stant truth of tour buses every­where, which is that since they’re designed to have the max­i­mum num­ber of buns in seats, they’re designed more for midgets and double-amputees than the rest of us. If my femur had be four inches long and my hips and shoul­ders able to tele­scope inwards, it would’ve been fine. Unfor­tu­nately, I have not been blessed with either of those muta­tions, and the 3-hour time in the bus went from uncom­fort­able to just plain painful.

    barrow-027.jpgSo the best endorse­ment I can give to Cum­bria is that it was worth the drive. The bus took us up wind­ing roads that wouldn’t have seemed to fit a VW van, let alone two lanes of traf­fic, and the coun­try­side turned from merely green to down­right bucolic. Lit­tle Eng­lish gar­dens spilled over walls and embank­ments as build­ings gave way to cot­tages in vil­lages full of jum­bled stone. Inside fields blocked off by mossy stone walls, ruddy cows, Clydes­dales and fat sheep grazed or laid about in per­fect con­tent­ment. Calves and lambs capered occa­sion­ally while their moth­ers blinked up at them in the dap­pling sunshine.

    barrow-005.jpgWe made our way through many lit­tle vil­lages with names like Con­is­ton, Haver­th­waite, Ulver­ston (where a Lau­rel & Hardy museum pays homage to the birth­place of Stan Lau­rel) — to Lake Win­damere and Hawk­shead, where we were allowed (praise be!) to get out and take a 2-hour stretch and stroll.

    That was where I took most of the pic­tures, but as so often hap­pens, they don’t feel like they do it jus­tice. The thing that you can’t show in a photo is that the view is all around you from many dif­fer­ent van­tage spots. Some­times I walked down a street and found bet­ter and bet­ter pic­tures to take as I walked.

    In the end, I finally stowed the cam­era so I could just take my own pic­tures in my head, though that kind may be harder to share (and a lot harder to frame!). It was a fine drive in fine coun­try­side, and Greg and I asked the tour­guide for the near­est air­port so we could con­sider com­ing back again.

    And I wouldn’t even mind tak­ing the same bus tour, if I ever lose both legs. That might be a very nice consolation.

    barrow-018.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. If Eng­land were Orthodox …
    2. Eng­land swings like a cen­sor do
    3. Dublin and Belfast
    4. When no one was look­ing, Cindy Shee­han went com­pletely mad
    5. Bick­er­ing at Bethlehem

    May 30th, 2009 | Grace | No Comments |

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required