Cartmel

After one of my day walks on the Cumbria coastal path, instead of meeting Mum and Dad at Grange-over-Sands railway station, I travelled further to Cark and Cartmel railway station to meet them and there then followed an hour of misunderstandings, misread road signs and me walking three extra miles that I didn't need to!  When we finally caught up with each other (after I'd walked back to Cark and Cartmel railway station!), we drove off to Cartmel for lunch - the trouble was that we'd taken so long to get our combined acts together, that no-one was serving lunch any more and we had to make do with cake instead - every cloud, etc!

Cartmel is a beautiful little village but everything is so blinking expensive!  There are wine shops, cheese shops, delicatessens, gift shops, everything the discerning tourist with any money could want.  That didn't put us off though - it was so pretty, although quite dangerous around the market square with drivers clearly disregarding any Highway Code best practice, in favour of getting a parking space.   Pedestrians beware!  And sensible drivers beware also! 

We headed through the village to Cartmel Priory (dating back to 1189) and spent some time in there - what a building!  It's enormous!  But not at all imposing, and very peaceful.

After our mini-pilgrimage around the church, we headed back into the village for food - some rather lovely cheese from Cartmel Cheese and then some very posh artisan bread from the bakers.  (Also some Cartmel Sticky Toffee Puddings from the post office/ delicatessen, which we couldn't manage to eat that night due to the size of the fish and chips we had for tea!  I can report that the sticky toffee puddings were consumed some weeks later back at Mum and Dad's, and very delicious they were too.)

This was our last afternoon before heading home after our holiday and it was a treat to spend some quality time with Mum and Dad.  I really enjoyed this mid week break with them and found the whole week very entertaining.  Mostly for the right reasons!