Write then, let's get to the point

A nicely slow day today after sleeping in a bit again and then trying to decide where to go. The weather forecast wasn't looking brilliant so I phoned the swimming pool for the timetable and we decided it was all much too much faff.  In my day you turned up to the pool, paid some money, and you went swimming for an hour.  Now it's all go to our website, create an account, log in, pay online for a subscription fee, register for this or that session according to when is actually public swimming (and it might not be often), pay online for the session, and then finally turn up and went swimming.

Instead, since the sun was out, we walked round Braithwaite to see what was where, took photos of bridges, fingerposts, nice benches and the view (top left pic).  To get our 10,000 steps in, we decided to follow the old roads to Keswick, nipping down to Derwent Water Marina to gaze over the water from the pier.  After crossing the River Derwent on a neat little pedestrian suspension bridge where BikerBabe posed for my photo (top right) all we had to do was follow the level trail into town.

My feet were a bit sore by then so we took ourselves up the high street to the cafe we had lunch in on our last day back in August, and we managed to get the same table again too.  Well filled pasties and some absolutely lovely coffee was just the thing.

For the rest of the afternoon we visited the Cumberland Pencil Museum.  It had been a long, long time since my first visit with Mum and Dad.  A museum, about pencils?  Well you see, we discovered graphite in them there hills, and we then invented the pencil, and Keswick has been the home of a steadily expanded factory ever since (bottom left pic), making every kind of luxurious writing pencils, coloured pencils, watercolour pencils; and the museum is home to both the largest pencil in the world and the rarest!  If you don't believe me, you'll just have to visit.  Bottom right pic is a King's Own clutch pencil.  I have one at home, a lovely and slightly old fashioned souvenir from my first visit.

The forecast came true when we left the museum, with light rain arriving, and after a quick whizz round the supermarket, to save our feet we caught the bus back.  The rain arrived this evening but we're hopeful that it will pass by lunchtime tomorrow.