Another "Bit" - Acorn Bank is a pleasant place for a quiet afternoon

Close to the village of Temple Sowerby, in between Appleby and Penrith, is the Acorn Bank house and estate. Nowadays it is owned by the National Trust. It has delightful woodland walks plus a reconditioned operational watermill. At the reception area in the house visitors are able to purchase flour ground in the mill. At the opposite end of the estate are a few ruins of a small-scale gypsum mine, a reminder of just one of the extractive industries that supported the local people well before the holidaymakers came, and in fact even today provides employment in this area of the Eden Valley. Near the house is a delightful walled garden and an apple orchard. For many visitors, however, the top attraction is the remarkable herb garden. The Acorn Bank garden has in excess of 250 varieties of both culinary and medicinal herbs.

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I hope you found that interesting. If you didn't then don't give up on me. Just come back for more later. There'll be a lot of different stuff here.

Another "Bit" - Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells by Alfred Wainwright

Ever since I started my online bookshop at TheLakeDistrict.inBooks.co uk I have been selling copies of the Pictorial Guides. Consistently over the years they have been among the most popular titles, both in their original format and also the second revised edition. In fact the product heading my statistics with the highest number sold is the Wainwright Guides revised edition, not as a single title, but the full boxed set. I've sold more of these than any other single item. In fact they have been so popular that some time ago I created a special site devoted specifically to them: The Wainwright Guides

Now it appears that there's going to be a further revision. It will take several years as every one of Wainwright's routes up every mountain has to be checked carefully for changes. I suppose my initial thought about this was, "Help", no-one's going to be buying the current edition now.

However, I don't think that will happen, simply because if you're going to take a Lake District walking holiday this year you need your Wainwright Guide now, not in three years time. And when you've become so hooked on Lakeland fellwalking that you come back again and again you'll have given it so much use that you'll be ready for a fresh copy by the time the 3rd edition arrives on the scene.

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I hope you found that interesting. If you didn't then don't give up on me. Just come back for more later. There'll be a lot of different stuff here.

Beatrix Potter - Lover of the Lake District

Lake District holidays did not commence with the creation of the National Park. Even back in the late eighteenth century people who could afford the journey enjoyed relaxing in the beautiful "newly discovered" area of the Northwest. But the late-nineteenth century, with rail travel in full swing, families such as that of the young Beatrix Potter would rent a house for weeks at a time to get away from city life.

Lake District walks were her great pleasure. She fell in love with the Cumbrian countryside, and as the Beatrix Potter stories started to become well known and she began to prosper as a writer she bought a property which eventually became her main home - Hill Top Farm, now in the care of the National trust.

In early life she had fallen in love with her publisher. They became secretly engaged but he died at a young age before they could be married. Many years later she married William Heelis, a country lawyer.

Nowadays what was his office in Hawkshead is also a National Trust property operating as the Beatrix Potter Gallery. Many of her watercolours and sketches, originally produced for her books, are on display there. Other highlights of the gallery's displays are items relating to the film starting Renne Zellwegger, 'Miss Potter'.

She was an astute business woman. Not only the Beatrix Potter books but many other related products added to her wealth, much of which was put to use in purchasing land in the Lake District for conservation purposes. and especially to protect the traditional hill farming way of life and the area's distinctive Herdwick sheep.

The many books by Beatrix Potter are today popular around the world as is confirmed by the great numbers of international visitors who each year flock to see her old farmhouse. The gift of a Beatrix Potter complete collection
has become a treasured possession of thousand, children, teenagers and adults alike. And it's not only books

Hawkshead village is well worth a visit. It has the school that the 19th century poet laureate William Wordsworth attended, as well as the Beatrix Potter Gallery. Hill Top is not far away, on the road towards the Windermere ferry.