Lake District & Gretna Green Review

Hello everyone, and welcome to another blog post!

Today I wanted to do a quick holiday review, you may or may not know that back at the end of March me and the Mr had a short break away in the Lake District and then onto Gretna for a wedding after.

When we booked our holiday, around Christmas time, I remember saying to my boyfriend how being the end of March, you never know, we might get some nice weather. How wrong could I have been!

Although the picture above does show a beautiful sunny day, as you can see there was snow on the ground! 

The Lakes

We left home early on the Friday morning, I had travelled to my Boyfriends the night before (for those of you who don't know, my boyfriend lives in the Midlands) and started heading Northwards, the Mr laughing at me because I hadn't really travelled too far North before, I am quite the Southern Belle!

After what seemed like hours on the road...well, it was hours on the road and more snow than you could shake your fist at (Thats a weird saying, isn't it?) we decided to stop for coffee and too warm up. However the service station was freezing and the snow was really coming down, so we bid a hasty retreat back to the car.

Arriving in the Lakes we headed straight for our B&B in Bowness-on-Windermere, which overlooked Lake Windermere, and much to my Boyfriends anguish was up a hugely steep hill (which he had to conquer in the snow & ice). We checked in and got ourselves settled in. Our room had a wonderful view of Lake Windermere, but there was such bad snow outside we couldn't even see where the lake was supposed to be (as you can see from the picture below).

The rest of the first day mainly consisted of exploring Bowness, and then taking ourselves off to dinner at the most wonderful Tapas Restaurant Bodega which can be located on Ash Street. If you are in the area you must give it a try, we were thoroughly impressed and it had a great range of vegetarian options for my boyfriend.

The next morning, we got up and headed off for our walk, we had decided to do at least one walk, weather permitting, and to be honest, it wasn't prime walking weather, being snowy, but we did a walk which had been suggested to me by a colleague, called 'Brants Fell'. It was a pretty tough uphill walk, which was exacerbated by the immense snow (as you can see above). The 360 degree views from the top were well worth the walk.

For more information on Brants Fell: Walking Brants Fell

After a strenuous morning, in the afternoon we headed into Bowness and visited the Beatrix Potter Museum. If you aren't aware, the Lake District is strong Beatrix Potter country, with a number of places relating to the author. The Museum looked tiny from the outside, and I guess it wasn't massive inside but it does give you a great insight into the life and works of Beatrix Potter, and it was great to see so many of my childhood characters come to life. 

In the evening we went to a gorgeous little Italian place, called Rumours, our bottle of red wine wasn't up to much, but we both really enjoyed the food.

On our third day in the Lakes we decided to head out by car, and check out the stone circle at Castlerigg. I love things like that, history, heritage etc. So we made our way to Keswick, and on seeing the road up to the stone circle, we decided to park up and walk, and good job we did, on the way up we saw an ice cream van stuck on ice (No we never worked out why the ice cream van was out in the snow either) and on the way down helped a couple who got their car stuck and then themselves slipped on the ice. 

After that we headed for a nice warm drink in a local pub, and then headed off through Ambleside and visited Kendal. We stopped for the most amazing lunch in a really great little bistro, but I can't for the life of me remember its name (and I have searched high and low online too) but I do know I had the most wonderful Eggs Benedict.

Our B&B

Our B&B, Blenheim Lodge, was set in a beautiful location, just off the main road in Bowness, meaning we were just a short walk away from a wide range of bars and restaurants. We had a beautiful room, The Langdale, with a beautiful bay window which gave beautiful view of the lake, as you can see from the above picture.

The room was a great size, comfortable and had beautiful views, and it was a wonderful picturesque scene to wake up to every morning. 

Breakfast was wonderful, I can particularly recommend the poached eggs which were lovely.

The owners were wonderful, helping us out with potential walks, things to do and see in the local area, and looked after us wonderfully.

If you're looking for a wonderful B&B, in a great location then look no further, I thoroughly recommend it.

Gretna Green & The Wedding

After a wonderful break in the lakes it was onto Gretna for the wedding. It was freezing in Scotland when we arrived, we went to the wedding before going off for some lunch in Costa (and a nice Hot Chocolate to warm ourselves up).

Our original plan was to use the time between the wedding and the evening reception exploring Gretna, but it was very cold and instead we headed to our hotel, checked in and warmed up and relaxed.

It was a very short visit, the next morning, we quickly explored the grounds of our hotel, took a few photos before heading back to the Midlands.

We had a wonderful trip, it was busy but relaxing at the same time. 

If you're in the Lakes or Gretna, I thoroughly recommend the places I have mentioned. 

Have you been to the Lakes or Gretna? Do you have any great recommendations? Please leave your comments below.