Roaming with The Robertsons

  After another delicious breakfast, for our last day of our holiday we decided to go to Grasmere. We had seen online the walk to Rydal Cave which we fancied trying. This is a walk that took us from the centre of Grasmere, along the main road and then off onto a track past Rydal water and up to the cave. Parts of the walk were slightly steep and challenging, but it was definitely worth the effort once you reached the cave. You can head across the stepping stones inside the cave, which is the only real way to admire all its beauty. After our walk, we headed to the Wordsworth Museum , which tells you all about the lives of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and there is an opportunity for a tour of their house in Grasmere. We got ourselves booked onto the tour for just after lunch as there were several coaches already booked on in the morning, and spent some time exploring the exhibition. We headed into Grasmere for lunch and found a small café called Greens . This offered a wide va...

  We started off our morning with breakfast in the B&B. After a small awkward encounter due to someone else sitting on our allocated table, we sat down to enjoy a combination of the continental options available (cereal, toast and fresh croissants with jam) and a cooked breakfast. The staff were very accommodating and provided an excellent vegan option for Nicole. The full breakfast (minus the mushrooms that ended up making their way to Nicole’s plate and very quickly off of mine) was delicious and set me up for the day ahead! Today we decided to start off with a trip to Wray Castle . The road to get there was an interesting drive and, in hind sight, we would have joined the National Trust much earlier than we did as we could have avoided paying a fortune for parking at this location (£5 for 2 hours!). We had a wander round the site and took in the views of the castle, gardens and church. The castle unfortunately wasn’t open when we were there, so it would be worth returning ...

  We decided to celebrate our first wedding anniversary with a little trip away. We didn’t want to go away on our actual anniversary as this was during the Easter school holidays, and this was a good decision as, although it was fairly busy around, it would have been a lot worse a week later. For our holiday, we thought it was a good idea to not venture too far from home as we seem to do a lot of travelling for holidays, but still we managed to go somewhere that neither of us have even been on holiday – the Lake District. We started our holiday by driving to Bowness-on-Windermere, with our sights set on a trip on Windemere. We made sure that we could do this by booking in advance with Windermere Lake Cruises for their first cruise of the day. This company provides you options of either going on a round trip to just enjoy the sights, or getting off and on at various places across the lake. We opted for the Yellow Cruise, which takes you from Bowness down to the southern tip of th...

  Today is the day. Harry Potter Studios here we come! We had to book the tickets way in advance to ensure that we could go whilst we were down. We looked around December and there was plenty of time slots, but by the time we came to book it there were very limited times available! Our advice would be to definitely plan ahead. We had a nice morning just relaxing before heading off to the studio for 2pm. It was my first experience on the M25, and all I can say is that I am glad I do not have to take that commute regularly. Even when we headed off back in the evening it was still extremely busy. We wanted to get there early to allow us to have a snack before heading around on the studio tour. We had a quick look around the shop before we headed in the cafeteria. I think this was a mistake as we (or more so I) found a lot of things I wanted to buy before I had even been on the tour and I did purchase a baseball cap for my Hogwarts house - Hufflepuff. I have done the Pottermore test at...

Over the past few years, Nicole has been invited to guest lecture at the University of Reading. This year the lecture was face-to-face for the first time since COVID. This meant that we made it into a mini holiday break. Why not when it is such a long way to drive! We set off as soon as we could on Saturday morning as we were hoping to stop off at Henley for some lunch and a wander before we set off to our AirBnB for the weekend. The drive down felt very long! I don’t know if this was due to setting off earlier, so we didn’t have lunch halfway down, or maybe I am just getting a bit more impatient with long journeys. We made it down with few issues and hit Henley at just the right time for lunch. However, during the last few minutes of the car journey, I spotted a bird I had not seen before and soon became fixated on finding out what the mystery bird was. I didn’t think I would need to bring the binoculars and bird identifier book so had left it at home. I had it in my head it was a big...