CHAPTER 5: WINDERMERE, ENGLAND
Monday, September 6

We left Edinburgh late this morning. I picked up our Ford Contour station wagon rentacar from Hertz. They screwed up our reservations a little bit, but everything worked out okay anyway. The car had plenty of space for our bags; rode and handled well, and even has a CD player. Now if we just had a few CD's, we'd be in hog heaven. Then we loaded our bags into the car, checked out of our B&B, and hit the road.

We had a great drive down. We took the back roads and stayed off the main highways as much as possible in order to really see the Scottish and English countrysides. Absolutely beautiful. Guess you've heard this before. We stopped about halfway down and toured the Hermitage Castle. This is a really remote castle in a barren area of the southern Scotland border area, dating from about the 13th century. Its claim to fame is that Mary, Queen of Scots, had a 2-hour tryst with her main man there one day. The gossip papers of the time had a field day with it - about the same reaction that you'd see if Queen Liz ran off for a quick boink with, say, Hosni Mubarak.

Once we finished with Queen Mary's love life, we hit the road again and scooted on down to the Lake District. This area can be described in one word:
OH
MY
GOD

Okay, that's three words. It's worth it. Unreal. Imagine, say, Vail, Colorado. Now smooth off the mountains, add a lot of greenery, lots of trees, stone fences going straight up and over the mountains, an infinite number of terminally cute English stone cottages, too damn many cars on the roads, a whole bunch of PERFECT lakes, and you have a close approximation of this place. We are enthralled. We are going to have a good time exploring this place.

We're staying at the Rockside Guest House in Windermere. This is a great B&B, much better than the one in Edinburgh. It has more character (the architect must have been a devotee of those 3-D wooden puzzles, because that's pretty much how the interior is laid out), much more room, and a phone line right here in the room for surfing AOL. What more could a body ask for?

For you motorheads, here are some odd thoughts:
- Roads in this area are, umm, "challenging". They're very narrow: about 3 inches wider than your car, bordered by BIG stone walls, and nowhere are they straight for more than 50 yards. Add in big tourist buses and lorries going 75 miles an hour in the opposite direction, usually taking their half of the road out of the middle, and you can see that you need to pay attention.
- Half the drivers here are maniacs and the other half are idiots. (Let me qualify that: a "maniac" is any driver who wants to drive faster than you; an "idiot" is any driver who's slower). All in all, the "idiots" have the right idea.
- A station wagon, no matter how good it runs, is not the ideal car for this area. What you really need is a Lotus Super Seven (which, incidentally, we saw ripping along at twice the speed limit in the opposite direction; "maniac" does not apply to Lotus drivers).

Now for some thoughts from Janis:

What could I have to add - this place is incredibly beautiful. The stone walls that divide the properties just boggle the mind. They go on forever; it must have taken years to complete them. Sheep are everywhere and we even saw a pig farm. Pigs are treated infinitely better here than in the US: little pigs are running and jumping all over the place. There are lots of horses and moo cows. The weather has continued to be warm; in fact, it's the warmest September on record. Right now it's raining but at least it waited till we went to dinner, drank a bottle of wine, and came back to our room. A great day for us and we are really looking forward to discovering this place tomorrow. I imagine I'll check into horseback riding and Skip wants to do some sailing on the lake. There is also a steam train ride we want to look into etc etc etc. Much to do!

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