UK 2014, Keswick craft fair and Hadrians Wall

From our kitchen window we can see the church community hall, across the road, and there was a craft sale as part of the market today. Everyone involved was very talented and I bought gifts for myself and others.

Across the road.

The craft market was very enjoyable, in spite of the drizzle. Slate, wool, art, sculpture, painting, weaving, photography, pencil drawings, pottery were all in evidence along with all kinds of locally made food stuff. We spread out our support of the local economy but in terms of food bought olives (not local!), marmalade, lemon curd, pork pies, scones, fudge, pizzas, cinnamon rolls.

The slate on the left is local, within 20miles, and is green or greeny blue. The slate on the right
is black, Scottish slate. We noticed as we drove into the Lake District that the roofs and even
walls of the houses had green and blue/green hues.

The Moot Hall is in the centre of the pedestrian area, which is where the craft market was held.

We went into the Moot Hall, which is where the tourist office is, to get tickets for the launch tomorrow. Every day they post the weather forecast, from the internet, outside. Todays said, something along the lines of; "clearer and drier, with occasional showers, sometimes heavy. Hill fog.". I think being a weather forecaster here would be easy, just list every possibility.

This stand had knitting and yarns. These are the three colours of yarns that come from Lake District
sheep when not dyed.

Heather had read that one of the Keswick attractions was a pencil museum. In spite of some teasing from Pam, Heather had to see it.

It was actually quite interesting. According to the plaques (and I have to read them all), graphite was discovered by shepherds in the 1500s and they used it to identify their sheep. A cottage industry developed with families wrapping the graphite in sheep wool or hide, thus selling the first pencils. The graphite was mined locally and a pencil factories built and improved on over the years. Currently Cumberland pencils are the last UK pencil manufacturer. There was a display about pencils created during the 2nd world war that hid maps and compasses for escaped prisoners of war.

A display of old pencil boxes.

Pam, here's Heather under the largest pencil in the world (Guiness Record)

The first misunderstanding of the trip was that Don and Heather thought that I wanted to see Hadrian's Wall and I thought that Don wanted to see it. So we all headed out, to do the other a favour. Don't know how it happened, via various e-mails over the last few months, but actually, none of us were particularly interested in seeing Hadrian's wall. We didn't discover this until we were there. However it was a lovely drive through the British countryside. I drove and Don navigated us on A roads and B roads through wonderful farmland, narrow roads, high hedges, hump back bridges, sheep and cattle.

Parked at the site of a Banks turret on Hadrian's Wall.

You can walk a footpath from one side of the country to the other, along Hadrian's wall.
It takes about a week. We walked about a kilometre. This part is a footpath between a wooden
fence and a stone wall.

A stone stile on the footpath



 

Part of the footpath took us through a field of sheep so of course we couldn't resist the sheep portraits. I can't wait to see Don's as he is using a single reflex camera and I'm just using a "point and shoot".

Gate and sign on Hadrian's Wall footpath.

On the way back, Don got his driving initiation (for this trip) and I managed to navigate him on to the narrowest road we have seen yet. There was just enough room for one small car between high banks, topped by hedges, and no lay-by or wider spot to back up to, for miles. A great relief when we came out onto a B road and then an A road to get home. Drove into Keswick in the dark and went to dinner at a pub. I had prawn salad followed by sticky toffee pudding with hot custard. Aaaah, great day.