Elterwater

It's the first anniversary of Milly and her boyfriend, Evan, and to celebrate they've booked a room at the Langdale Hotel, near Ambleside. Before I go any further, I must say that something in the world of economics has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Whilst I think that what Milly earns from her job is comparable with what I earned at her age - allowing for inflation, obviously - there's no way I could have afforded to take my girlfriend to a hotel when I was eighteen.

Anyway, I'd offered to run them to their hotel, this afternoon. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure where the hotel was but Evan had the postcode and we set off, happy to follow the satnav. We took the road out to Kendal and then up past Windermere to Ambleside, where we struck west towards Skelwith Bridge along the A593. About half a mile along, there is a junction with a road to the left where I had one of my proudest driving moments. 

The road in question, the B5286, comes up from Hawkshead and there is a steep incline just as it meets the A593. During the Easter holidays in 1984, we were staying in the Lakes (possibly at Brown Cow Cottage in Hawkshead)*. I had passed my driving test the previous December and I was keen to do as much driving as possible. On this occasion, I guess we would have been driving up from Hawkshead to Ambleside, and as I came to the junction in question, I managed to judge it so the car came naturally to a halt just where the roads met  and I then caught it on the clutch, checked for traffic, and pulled away. OK, I know that's pretty boring but even now, nearly thirty-one years later I can still remember, still summon up, the quiet pride I felt. I didn't need anyone else to tell me; I knew I'd handled it perfectly.

Back to today and we headed north from Skelwith Bridge up to Elterwater. More than twenty years ago, when Charlie was a baby, we used to park up at the slate factory by the bridge and walk up to the Britannia Arms at Elterwater. I think it was just a rough, muddy path back, then. Now it looks like it's been tarmac'd. It turned out that the Langdale was just outside Elterwater, so I dropped Milly and Evan off and then drove back up the hill, stopping only to take a photo of this odd little village, nestled in the middle of nowhere. 

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