Day Six - Gretna Green, the lake district , Grasmere and Liverpool

woke early and went for a walk around the gardens and sprinkled M &and D in the garden walk in amongst the daffodils. saw some very cute bunnies

 a lovely breakfast. The breakfasts at the hotels so far are almost always smorgasbord which is great, as one can take what one likes and we both load up on eggs, beans and lovely roasted tomatoes.  Another short walk through the grounds and on to the bus and it is our turn to sit in the front of the bus which is great as today we are going through  the lake district. 

The country roads are very narrow and several times I was holding my breath as we passed vehicles going the other way. When we were sitting back further in at the bus I never noticed how close we were but in the front seats you can’t help but notice how close they get to each other. yikes!

Onto the hi way and south to Gretna Green, the marriage spot of Great Britain in days gone by. The legal age for marriage in Scotland was 16 so lots of couples eloped to Gretna Green to get married without their parents permission. Jane Austens character Lydia was reported to do so with the wicked Mr. Wickham (but they didn’t really get married at all, that is how wicked Wickham was). The part of Gretna Green that we saw consisted of a collection of old buildings all in good shape, that had been turned into shops and restaurants for us tourists. Very nice and we picked up quite a few things there. Coasters at one shop, pens in another and then Margie bought me my birthday present there, a lovely celtic cross necklace. Thank you Margie.

Peter told us the heather that we saw by the bus was planted there special for the tourists as the heather doesn’t bloom until the fall but it would look the same.  

A picture of the first heather we were to see.

After Gretna Green we scooted into the lake district which is one of my favourite areas of England. There were miles of stone walls and sheep, sheep, sheep. small country roads stone bridges over small creeks by small farmsteads. so picturesque.
We experienced all kinds of english weather. There was raining clearing up to drizzly clearing up to sunny and gorgeous. 

We stopped for a small break at the lake? and got a fly past from the local air base. so nice. I got a lovely shot of the lovely ladies on the tour looking at the scenery which was also lovely. There were hiking trails across the road going way up those very late hills and tried to get a shot of

lake district

 sheep walls

 grasmere. We had lunch right here in this little restaurant.

Dennie laughing in Grasmere

William Wordsworths grave in Grasmere. He wrote a lot of his poetry here in the lake district. "Daffodils" was advertised everywhere.

 liverpool. Here is me Margie in Beatles exhibit. It was fun to reminisce