Lake District Gems | a blog about the Lakes
A blog exploring the Lake District's hidden gems and best-kept secrets
One of the very first posts I wrote for the blog was a list of 10 things to do in the Lake District on a rainy day. We do get quite a few wet days here, but, as they say, the Lake District wouldn’t be the Lake District without them! Since writing that post however, […]
Every now and again I’ll hear an interesting fact about the Lake District and think, ‘Another record belonging to the Lake District – I should collect them for a post!’ Well, having gathered a few facts now, the time has finally come, and although I’m sure I’ll have missed many more along the way, here […]
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so for this post I thought I’d let the photos do the talking and see if I can tempt you to visit the Lake District in 2017! For this post I set myself the challenge of including photographs containing views from throughout the year, which haven’t appeared […]
When I recently discovered that January is ‘Hot Tea Month’, I thought, now there’s a subject for a blog post! Although I’m not entirely sure how or where Hot Tea Month first came about – online sources seem to suggest it may have been the USA – here are some of my favourite stopping off […]
It’s that time of year again when our TV screens fill with reviews of the past year – the political, the surprising, the sad and the amusing. It therefore seemed a rather nice idea to take a look back over the last year of gem hunting, and revisit some of the standout moments from the […]
My fascination with Wray Castle started back in September this year when I visited the inside of this enormous mock-gothic Victorian house properly for the first time. It was whilst writing about Wray that I then came across its November ‘hard hat tours’ and thought what a great thing they too would be to share […]
Wray Castle is an unusual National Trust property in that you are told not to expect to find a well-furnished, pristine historic country house on a visit here. Children will love Wray however, and outside of the school holidays, I think there is plenty of intrigue to make it a destination for people of all […]
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that I’m not a fell walker, and that exploring the mountains isn’t something I aim to write about, even though they are an important and beautiful part of the Lake District (there are other great bloggers who do that, so I’ll leave it to the […]
Claife Viewing Station, on the western shore of Windermere, has been on my gem-hunting list for some time now. The remains of this historic viewing station were recently restored by the National Trust, and last weekend I finally got to see it for myself. According to the National Trust, Claife Viewing Station dates back to […]
2016 marks the 150th anniversary since Beatrix Potter’s birth, and whilst most of us are familiar with her beautifully illustrated children’s tales, there are many aspects of Beatrix’s life that are less well known. Sadly many of these wonderful facts weren’t included in the film ‘Miss Potter’. I think the film makers missed a trick […]