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Start Me Up!
I don’t know what Mick Jagger uses to get him going, but I like a bacon sandwich and some coffee. So that’s what I had. It was our first full day in Ambleside, and there was some serious settling in to be done, so I thought I’d start off in a happy mood.
After a lot of driving yesterday, and, to be honest a lot of running around in the few days before coming, we’d decided we weren’t going anywhere in the car on this day.
On that basis, I got out of bed in an unhurried way and took time over my bacon sandwich until it was late-morning. Kas was out running around Grasmere and the kids were in no hurry. Venus joined me for a sandwich though. Well, I made two, rather than sharing one.
A Bit of Shopping
What we did plan to do during the day was some shopping. For that, just read that there aren’t many things to do in Ambleside itself unless you are buying food or buying other things, so that’s what we planned to do.
First up we went to the rock shop. V wanted some more decorative rocks, so why not. After that we headed a bit further up the same street to gawp at souvenirs, jewellry, and other bits and bobs.
Both of those places were up the same street, one which ran slightly out of the main centre. From there we returned to the central area and decided it was lunchtime. We picked Sheila’s Cottage and were lucky enough that they had space for us. We had a selection of soup and sandwiches, all of which were good except one of our number picked a sandwich filling she didn’t like.
Afternoon
After lunch we continued our wanderings around Ambleside. After all, Ambleside has two dedicated chocolate shops and a fudge shop. We visited all of them but only made significant purchases from the fudge shop. I guess the chocolate shops weren’t up to the standard we were anticipating in Keswick later in the holiday.
Ambleside, as you would expect for what is essentially a mountainous tourist hub, mainly has shops offering one of four things:
- Luxury edibles
- Artwork mainly focussed on the local area
- Outdoor clothing and equipment
- Souvenirs
There’s not a lot else in Ambleside, to be honest, apart from restaurants and pubs. There’s loads of them.
Evening
And that was more or less it for activity during our first day. In the afternoon I went for a snooze but got caught up watching the end of the test match I’d seen part of on Thursday. It was a bit of a tense finish, so I didn’t get much sleep in.
We popped out to the Co-Op to get fooded up and then we had dinner at home. Venus fancied a simple pasta dish, and the rest of us had some Cajun chicken and rice.
It was kind of a relaxing and chilled day, which was good considering what we had planned for the following day.