Our England and Scotland Adventure: Day Three (19 August)

We said goodbye to the Burton house early Sunday morning

and made the three-hour drive to Grahame and Jo's other house in Penrith, at the edge of the Lake District. Although the weather continued to be a bit less than summery, the landscape began to hint at the beauty that lay ahead.

When we got to Penrith, Bob instantly made himself comfortable in the living room,
but was roused out of his comfortable chair when we decided to head out for a pub lunch at this homey establishment,
complete with a field of grazing cows right beside the car park. In addition to reminding us that we were in Low Hesket, this sign also informed us that we were 292.5 miles away from London (gotta like that half-mile):
Sunday lunches at this particular pub are generally quite crowded, so Grahame called ahead to reserve a table. After our delicious (and enormous) meals, we were very glad he did! (I went with the Sunday standard of roast beef
while Bob had the steak-and-ale pie . . . with some additional ale on the side, of course.)
After lunch, we passed by Long Meg and Her Daughters--a distinctly different set of Cumbrian residents. Long Meg is a large red sandstone and "her daughters" are a large set (some say 65; some say 69) of smaller granite stones which form a nearby prehistoric circle, close to 400 feet in diameter. Legend has it that it's impossible to count the stones twice with the same result; I don't know about that, but I certainly found it difficult to take a photo that showed the impressive scope of the circle! (For two great aerial photos of the circle, have a peek here.)
Long Meg is an imposing stone on its own,
and its spiral markings are pleasingly distinctive.
Next up was the lovely town of Appleby (full name: Appleby-in-Westmorland):

Grahame knows Appleby well, since he was evacuated there for three years during the war; in fact, this is the very house in which he lived:
The oldest part of St. Lawrence's Church dates from the 1100s

and its organ (containing parts from the 1500s) is the oldest working organ in England.

Just as we were leaving the church, Bob and I noticed a small, dimly lit room that seemed to be full of clutter. On closer consideration, it turned out that it was what I'll call the bell-ringing room, with numbers on small squares of carpet
underneath the pulleys that controlled various bells.
Imagining someone climbing onto the stack of wooden boxes, grabbing a pulley and then aiming for a particular square of carpet made me wish I could see the real thing! The River Eden flows all around Appleby, contributing to the relaxing atmosphere of the town:


Today was only our first day in the Penrith area, and the distinctive red sandstone of the region was definitely endearing itself to us.
I liked the names and images on many of the cottage nameplates

and Lady Anne's almshouses (founded in 1651) were beautiful, making good use of red doors to highlight the sandstone's rich hues.
After we left Appleby, we made one more short stop at Mayburgh Henge, a large stone set in an amphitheatre-like valley,
thought to date back to 2000-1000 B.C. as a community meeting-place. On a far less historical note, the reddish Cumbrian stone walls that crisscross fields throughout the region seemed equally (even more?) picturesque:

Our day of rambling meant that we had earned an evening snack of cheese and biscuits--not just any cheese, mind you, but Hartington Stilton (for me; Bob doesn't like blue cheese and had an aromatic Brie instead):
I am happy to report that Hartington Stilton is indeed delicious and that I was lucky to have it more than once during our time in Penrith!