Aira Force and a host of golden dafodils

Aira Force is one of the Lake District's most visited destinations. As popular today as it was in the Victorian times, it attracts hundreds of visitors each weekend, as can be seen by the fullness of the car park on sunny days!

Don't let this put you off though, it's popular because it's so lovely. The waterfall is spectacular, as are the wonderful trees surrounding it including monkey puzzles and the most enormous sitka spruce ever seen; and the walk up along good paths and steps is highly enjoyable.

It's great as an adventure walk for young tots - you need go no further up than the viewing point this picture was taken from (in 1890!!), or if they are feeling more energetic head up to the bridge and beyond - the rocks along the babbling river higher up make excellent picnic and stick throwing-in spots. It's a great walk for grown up visitors to the lakes too, the pub up at Dockray making a perfect stop off spot for lunch or much needed refreshments!

We make the walk longer by heading off to the right and following a track parallel to Ullswater to the summit of Gowbarrow. A walk mapped and described perfectly in Striding Edge our absolute favourite guide to all things Wainwright http://www.stridingedge.net/Walks/2011/09.%20September/22.09.11.htm
The views along the length of the lake are well worth the extra effort and the walk back beside the waterfall makes a perfect ending.

Which ever way you decide to go, don't miss the fabulous money tree on the way down. We have no idea why there are thousands of pennies hammered into this old log but we do know that they're sure as heck not coming out!

BTW The National Trust own the land around the waterfall and while you don't have to pay to walk there, you do have to pay to park. There are ways to get round this, ie by parking in one of the laybys on the road up to Dockray but actually we reckon that the Trust do a great job and we prefer to start at the bottom.

Will leave you with this wonderful picture of spring daffodils taken gratefully from davesdistrictblog.blogspot.com. The shores of Ullswater are where Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud, and now is the perfect time of year for seeing hosts of golden daffodils in all their glory.

An apology and a challenge

Our poor neglected blog! We are so sorry for not updating much in the last 12 months. Things are going to change though. We are back and fired up with lots of ideas for free days out in this beautiful county of ours. So with spring around the corner we have decided to challenge ourselves to coming up with at least one idea per week, that's 52 days of free fun folks. Watch this space....

BTW wondering what we've been doing all this time? We've most definitely not been sitting on our laurels, we've still been enjoying our free days out ticking off our Wainwright walks. 22 down 192 to go...

A quiet place with a noisy secret

There are not many places you can go to in the Lake District without bumping into a soul, but we have a secret, a beautiful spot just off the beaten track, with a secret all of it's own. Bowscale Tarn in the northern fells near Mugrisedale is our special spot. It's a great walk with the kids along the valley of the Caldew, rising gently on a good solid path to the majestic hidden tarn.

This was a popular spot with Victorian visitors. Wordsworth talked about two immortal fish who were supposed to inhabit the tarn it in his poem "Feast of Brougham Castle" and a visit was on the itinaries of all the fashionable folk at the time. These days it is off the beaten track and forgotten, but it is well worth a visit, for the peace and solitiude and views, and also for the extraordinary echo up there. Take two children and suddenly it sounds like a playground full! So much for peace and quiet - but lots and lots of fun. We made this video clip of us trying it out, which kind of shows it, but not nearly as good as it really is........... we love to be NOISY!!!

Wainright for beginners

Our little adventurers are 6 and nearly 4 now. We've done our fair share of pushchair walks and ambles around lakes, the time has now come to heighten their horizons! This afternoon they did their first ever Wainwright - a very short but steep hike up to Walla Crag above Derwentwater and Keswick.

There are 214 peaks in Alfred Wainwright's series of books about the Cumbrian Fells, we've been thinking that it would be cool to start off doing some of the smaller ones and get higher and higher as the boys get older. We've found two really great free resources on t'internet to help us with our mission - the first is http://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/ which lets you register and log your peaks as you climb them, and the second is http://www.stridingedge.net/ - a photo diary of one family's walks on the fells. The great thing about Stridingedge is that it has photos of all the walks and a little map of the routes used showing where to park, it also lists the walks in order of height as well as geographical location - very useful for those of us wanting to start at the bottom of the list! So here we are - Barney and George at 379 metres on the cairn at the summit of their Wainwright number1 - Walla Crag. Good work boys!