Sussex with Stephanie

Sarah's friend Stephanie (who is originally from London) was back in town visiting her family recently, and so last weekend we headed down to her family home in Crawley (just south of London) to pay her a visit.

We headed down Saturday evening, and after being introduced to Mrs Hyner and Jasper (their gorgeous collie who wouldn't stop playing fetch) headed to a gorgeous little pub (the Hedgehog Inn) for a great dinner. The English seem to have elevated pub food to another level, where you order what would probably be standard food in Australia, but you get something quite gourmet.

Sarah, Stephanie and Mrs Hyner outside the Hedgehog

Sunday we had a lie-in and a lazy breakfast before heading out to explore Sussex. Crawley is the southernmost tip of London before you hit the green belt and so driving south of there you pass through the Ashdown Forest, plus lots of countryside and cute little towns.

We headed South and West to Hartfield, home of A. A. Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame). There we had some tea at the House on Pooh Corner, and visited the Poohsticks bridge. For the uneducated (as I was) Poohsticks involves two (or more) people dropping their stick of choice into the river upstream from the bridge, and walking across the bridge to see which stick comes out downstream first. It is a very relaxing pasttime, and quite a popular one judging by the number of sticks which had accumulated downstream of the bridge.

Sarah and Stephanie at the House at Pooh Corner, planning our next move

Stephen and Stephanie, sticks at the ready...

We obviously weren't the first people to play this game...

From Hartfield we headed to Slougham for lunch, and some more fantastic pub food in the garden of the Chequers pub, and then to Nyman, a national trust property. The gardens at Nyman were beautiful, while the house itself was originally a much larger but partially destroyed by fire. The damaged sections have been left partially ruined, which looked fantastic with the Ivy growing amonst them. I think, though, that we were the youngest people there by at least 40 years!

Stephen and Stephanie at Nyman House

We had a lovely time visiting Stephanie, and it was great to meet some of her family and see some places around where she grew up. It never ceases to amaze just how how different London is from the countryside around it.

Lake District

The best thing about Easter (besides the obvious) was the four-day weekend, which we spent at the Lake District, around 250 miles NNW of London. Summary: when you think of the quintessential English countryside, you're thinking about the Lake District

We got up bright and early on Good Friday, picked up our rental car and headed north. We were having a really good run, and were really proud of ourselves for getting up early to miss the traffic, when we hit traffic just north of Birmingham...but it got better just past the turnoff to Blackpool, and we arrived at our accommodation in Kendall just after lunchtime.

Our accommodation was the very pleasant Helsington Laithes Manor, which dates back to the 15th century and was run by a lovely couple (and complete with yummy full English breakfast and authentic porridge). They lined us up with some great places for dinner (Cortez's spanish with awesome paellas and tapas and the Sun Inn, the pub in a cute one-pub town called Crook, who served semi-gastro-pub (as in, one step up from pub food, but still wholly English) food).

The view out our window at Helsington Laithes

Having checked out Kendall and been helped out by the lovely tourist info centre, we spent the afternoon rambling in the hills around the town. We wandered down past Scouts Scar, which was a quite dramatic cliff, and through the right-of-ways through the fields where we were followed by some very inquisitive cows.

Scout's Scar near KendallCows wouldn't stop following me (even though I kept telling them about how I was going to eat them later)

Saturday we took a leisurely drive up to Lake Conniston, where we took a row boat out on the lake. Sarah sat at the front and navigated, while Stephen took the oars - a very serene and civilised way to spend a morning, even though Stephen had some intial teething problems getting the steering right.

Stephen rowing (he had the hang of steering by now)

Sarah navigating

The view from the lake

Saturday afternoon we headed up towards Hawkshead, which is where Beatrix Potter lived and created the Peter Rabbit books. We saw some of her original artwork, as well as the lovely cottage where she lived.

Sarah outside Beatrix Potter's house

Sunday we headed to the North Lake District, where the landscape is much steeper and more rugged than the South Lakes District. We stopped off at Keswick, which was lovely but busy, and took a walk towards (we thought) the Castlerigg Stone Circle. As luck would have it, we instead ended up with fantastic views overlooking Derwent Water.

Stephen overlooking Derwent Water

Incidentally, and I'm only mentioning this because it spun me out, this is where Derwent pencils originally came from - there is a museum and everything! So when you got those coloured pencils with Derwent and Cumberland on the tin, that was because they were originally manufactured in the Derwent region of the county of Cumbria (in fact, here is where the first pencils ever were manufactured, according to the museum)

Sunday afternoon we headed to Sizherg castle, once inhabited by the same Lord Strickland who was a governor of NSW (and was later recalled) - amongst the battleaxes on the wall were boomerangs, and amongst the preserved animals were a platypus and a kookaburra. The gardens were great, too - we're making the most of our National Trust membership (which got us into the two Beatrix Potter places as well)!

We left early on Monday morning to beat the traffic, and were successful in that - we arrived back in London relaxed and ready to face a new week.

Takeaways from the weekend:
- if you're in the UK and have the time, the Lake District is definitely worth checking out
- if you're in the Lake District, check out both the Northern and Southern parts - they're both different and both beautiful in their own way
- always ask the locals for where to eat - we found some fantastic food
- while you don't need a SatNav to get from London to anywhere (as long as you have a navigator), a SatNav around London wouldn't hurt

New feature - map of our travels

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