Woke up a bit later today. After a good Scottish breakfast of poridge, I went for a bit of a walk around the caravan park.
The view here is amazing! The English seem to have this thing about builing caravan parks in the most inaccessible places. The
last one was on top of this big hill, and the wind would howl wround the caravan at night, driving the rain into the side.
This one is built on the side of a mountain - quite literally! The caravans are precariously balanced on these terraces and
the road between them must be at least a 1-in-3 gradient. It does offer an amazing view, however, down into the valley. And
up the mountain you can see there's still the usual evidence of human habitation - even though the paddock is overrun with
bracken, it's bounded by a dry-stone wall.
We went to Windemeyer lake today. There are so many people here it's not funny. I mean, this is supposed to be going into the off
season - I'd hate to see it during the peak season! We drove around for ages trying to find a park. Eventually we stopped at a
small park for lunch. It was quite nice, and there were all these berry bushes around, so we had to stop and have a few before lunch.
I had another sandwich for lunch. For something so cheap (only 99p for a sandwich), they're so delicious!
After lunch, we went to the lake proper and went for a bit of a boat ride. It was £11.50 for the ride, but I wasn't
there when my mum bought the ticket (I was putting the parking ticket in the car) so I didn't hear exactly what we'd
bought for our £11.50. My mum thought all we had bought was the boat ride - which was about 30 minutes each way, so
not too bad for the price. But when I looked at the brouchure, I noticed that the £11.50 ride included a train ride
in the steam train at the other end of the lake. If I hadn't been there, they'd have just stayed on the boat and gone
back without even seeing that train!
The train ride was pretty cool. I got to see then watering the train at the end of the ride, then the engine came down to the other end and attached to the end of the carriages. The carriages themselves were a bit, well, "rustic", but quite charming nonetheless. The ride didn't last all the long, but we got to see all the big houses down the river at the end of Lake Windemeyer.
Speaking of the houses, they were enormous. I don't know who would live in them - they all seemed rather isolated (well, isolated for this area - no other houses for a kilometer in each direction), but there's obviously a lot of money involve. They all had beautifully manicured lawns down to the water, and they all had more than one yacht parked in water. And, like everything in Brittain, they were all quite old. The trees in the yard looked positively ancient. Tall; very magestic.
By the time the boat-ride took us back to where we started, it was after 4:30 so we definately got the most from our £11.50. We
got driven back to the car park by a cute little road train.
We got back to the caravan park around 5:30. I drove this time, and I gotta say, I don't really enjoy driving on the country roads here. It's nothing like country roads in Australia. In Australia, I much prefer the country roads to the city roads, simply because there are so few cars. But here, you won't go a single minute without seeing a car coming the other way, even on the road to our caravan park, which is a dead end at the other end! And the roads are so narrow that when you meet another car, one of you has to pull right over so the other car can safely pass. It's very annoying!
For dinner tonight, we went to another pub near the caravan park. This pub is right down the road near the dead end. It's very much in the middle of nowhere, but there were tonnes of people! You even had to pay for parking!! The food was quite nice (you got a huge serve, just like at the other pubs I've eaten at), and the atmosphere is very... authentic. Very... rustic. My mum and grandmother were complaining (as usual) and the people ("you wouldn't want to complain about the food!" - the cook had bright red hair, spiked up - he looked like he just moved here from London, actually). For just £6, I got a huge sausage and chips (I love English chips!), and I only just finished it.
Another early night tonight, but I blame all the stuff we did today, more than the jet lag. I think by the end of the month, I'm going to need another holiday just to get over it all!