On my last day in England, I began my morning with breakfast in the hotel, overlooking the Windermere lake. Because I’m finishing up two summer school classes, before getting back to tourism, I had to complete and submit an essay. I started in my hotel and then moved to a coffee shop at check-out time, finishing right around noon.
I then was finally able to turn my attention back to the lake district. Windermere is the largest lake in England, and William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter (among other writers) took inspiration from the lake and the area surrounding it.
Again deciding that since my trip was already no longer on track, I leaned into “going with the flow”, something that has never been my strong suit. First, I walked around the town of Windermere, wandering into a church and down some main roads. Then, I walked along a lakeside path around a small part of the Windemere Lake.
I hopped into my car and next drove to a waterfall a bit north of the lake. (I ran into parking problems that ultimately led me to parking in an illegal spot because it was less dangerous than the legal spots, but that was just in keeping with the rest of the trip’s minor annoyances.) The waterfall itself was beautiful, well worth the stress, and led onto a path that brought me to another nearby lake (Elter Water). I took a nice stroll before heading back.
I tried to stop at another few viewpoints, but one of my main issues with the driving (besides the extremely narrow roads) is that the speed limit for most roads is 60 mph except in towns, and for certain viewpoints they don’t give drivers nearly enough warning to slow down. Still, I found my way to a pretty cool sight called Castlerigg Stone Circle, a 5,000-ish year-old, Stonehenge-like circle of rocks in the middle of a field. The rock circle was impressive, but so was the view. I spent some time there before heading back out for the next leg of my adventure.
Now, my destination for the night was Glasgow, back in Scotland. But in my original plan for the trip, I’d also wanted to fit in the North Pennines, a range of hills and national landscape. So I decided to go the 45 minutes out of my way to be able to say I’d seen at least something in the area. I put in the item on my to-do list that was the least far out of my way. But I’d misjudged, and as the rain started to fall and I drove out of my way, I ended up on what should have been but was almost certainly not a one-way, thin street that essentially was just a paved back-road through fields. I thought I was heading to a viewpoint, but when I found the sign where I was supposed to turn to park, it was in someone’s literal driveway, and I saw multiple signs saying not to park. I probably could’ve driven through the driveway, and perhaps there was parking past it. But I did a quick google search and realized that the viewpoint was a few mile walk, and nearing 6 pm, I did not want to commit to that much longer of a delay before my two-hour drive to Glasgow even if the countryside would stay light until almost ten. So, disappointed, I turned around and drove straight back to the highway and drove to Glasgow. The fanfare for passing over the border back into Scotland was significantly less on this highway, with just a few signs to indicate our approach and passing.
I finally arrived to my hotel in Glasgow around 8 pm. I was exhausted, and so I grabbed dinner and a free drink from my hotel, then went back to work on some more homework.
Homework was how I started my next day, too, and after breakfast, I worked on it until checkout. Then, after checkout, I headed to the Clydeside Distillery, a fairly new distillery right next to the River Clyde where the Queen’s Dock used to be. I was driving right afterward, but Scotland has a zero-tolerance policy for driving under the influence, so the tour guide in the distillery provided me with take-away jars of whiskey that I finished after dinner that night.
Before leaving Glasgow, I wanted to see something else that I hadn’t seen the last time I’d been there briefly in 2015. I decided I wanted to see the University of Glasgow. I found the general area of the university and then parked (again running into trouble when trying to park because I didn’t have any small coins or bills and the payment machines only collected small coins or bills or required payment by phone, which didn’t work).
While wandering onto the campus of the University of Glasgow, a top 100 university, I stumbled onto a graduation. Certain places were off-limits because of the graduation, but overall I really enjoyed seeing graduates in regalia wandering around while I walked through buildings, into the on-campus museum, and through courtyards. The University of Glasgow was where Lord Kelvin (the Kelvin temperature scale) worked for over 50 years, and I got to learn a bit about him throughout my makeshift scavenger-hunt through the university.
Feeling satisfied, and like I’d finally caught up on the “touristy” stuff I’d been missing out on, I left Glasgow after a short walk in a park near the university campus.
I drove to my hotel for the next two nights, in a little town called Dunblane right north of Stirling. The hotel was really nice and offered an incredible view from my third-floor window.
I had some work to do that night (both a Zoom call and another paper), so I was planning on having a relatively laid-back night. But before my meeting, I wandered down to the town, taking a look into one church and a walk through the graveyard of another. I also walked along the river and scouted a place for dinner in the town. After my meeting, I walked back down to the town to grab dinner before finishing up my night with a bath and then the remainder of my essay before heading off to bed. I’d spend the next few days in the area around Stirling and Dunbar.
WANDERING 