The Lakes - Day 4 xx

Another lovely day today though it has rained for most of the day.  First thing this morning we went to The Beatrix Potter Gallery at Hawkshead which is National Trust.  It was previously used as the office of Beatrix Potter's solicitor husband, William Heelis.  The theme this year is Beatrix Potter on holiday, so there were display's of things that Beatrix Potter had collected on her holidays.  Anais and Roman had fun looking at the old drawings and doing the trail around the building.  The lady in the shop rewarded them with a Pigling Bland badge each at the end.  The also contributed to a display board of things they like to take on holiday, Roman said "a rocket" and Anais said "phone, computer, crafty stuff and notebook"!

Next stop was Hilltop (also National Trust) via Esthwaite Water.

Esthwaite Water

Sadly no photo's are allowed to be taken inside Hilltop though we all found it fascinating.  The lady on the door greeted us with a copy of Beatrix Potter "The Tale of Samuel Whiskers" and asked if we knew the story?  Roman said YES!  He had done it at school and told the lady the plot!  She was very impressed.  She said the story was based INSIDE Hilltop and showed us several picture's from the book and said to look out for them inside the house.  They both enjoyed looking for the real life things depicted in the book and I think we found most of them.  Roman was particularly taken with the rat hole!

The wooden fireplace inside the bedroom was particularly fascinating as it had been handcarved by William Heelis and given to Beatrix Potter for a milestone anniversary.  He had also carved their initials and the year 1934 in it.

We also did a quiz around the garden's of Hilltop looking for wooden bunnies and duck's holding letter's.  Once we had found all the letter's we had to arrange them into a word.

Here are picture's taken from Hilltop Garden and the outside of the house......

Near Sawrey is such a pretty place, greenery for miles and miles around....

Anvil Cottage was the building featured in "The Tale of Samuel Whiskers" (along with the interior of Hilltop).............

This building used to be the "Ginger and Pickles" shop as featured in "The Tale of Ginger and Pickles".....................

The Tower Bank Arms was featured in "The Tale of Jenima Puddleduck".............

This building was The Old Post Office as featured in "The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan"......................

Gate as featured in "The Tale of Tom Kitten".....................

We went to Tarn Hows for lunch though we had to eat lunch in the car as we couldn't get out to walk to it as it was raining very heavily.  I LOVE Tarn Hows, it is one of my favourite places in all of the Lakes.  Lots of happy memories here - walking around it when Anais was a toddler and Mark having to carry her........ struggling to push Roman's buggy around when he was a baby........ looking at newts by the shore........ trying to rescue dad's remote control plane when Mark crash landed it IN THE WATER....... feeding the duck's........... Anais counting, pointing to and running away from dragonflies when she was little!

Tarn Hows is simply stunning.............

We turned left out of the car park to go down the lanes towards Coniston.  Look how cloudy it was and how high up we were...........

Unfortunately, we couldn't get out of the car for a walk around Coniston either as by the time we had parked the car it was pouring with rain again.  Here are two photo's we managed to take of Consiton.

As it was heavy rain we came back to the apartment and had another crafty afternoon.  We borrowed "Miss Potter" from the DVD library in reception and watched half of it, even Roman was interested in it as it featured some of the places/things we had seen today.  When the rain finally stopped we walked to the lake to feed the ducks.  Roman was upset as none of the ducks would eat the bread out of his fingers today, the only thing interested was the swan's which he was scared of.  Mark put his glove on Roman's hand and a piece of bread in it and the swan ate out of his hand - he was proud of himself!

After feeding the ducks we took the kids swimming and was lucky enough to have the swimming pool to ourselves so we took some photo's (again, all photo's of Anais and Roman have been uploaded to Facebook).  Mark took his tablet to surf the internet using the WIFI and I took my knitting to do more work on the scarf!

After swimming and while tea was cooking we watched the second half of "Miss Potter" DVD and all got on with our crafty things.........

Today I finished the Katia Rocio Plus scarf....

Mark and Roman did more work on the train, to be continued........

Anais made more Shrinkles, first she coloured them, then cut them out, put them in the oven where they curled up and then went flat, left them to cool and the final picture is of all of the ones she made so far.

After tea we watched the second James Bond film "From Russia with Love" (didn't interest me so I blogged!) and when the kids went to bed we watched "Coyote Ugly" which we borrowed from the DVD library.