Lake District again

Another visit to the Lake District, but this time without Denise as she is still in NZ. I went up on the Friday night and it took 4.5 hours as I hit the peak traffic at both Birmingham and Manchester and this certainly slows things down a bit.
On the Saturday I went up to Lake Windemere and stopped and found lunch, there was a nice sandwich shop which freshly made the sandwich while you waited. After a wander around the Lake edge I then headed for Lake Grasmere as I had read that there was a famous Ginger Bread shop in the village.

Sarah Kemp was born in Bowness-on-Windermere in 1815. She had a hard life, as a child she knew poverty, and her widowed mother was only too thankful to get her daughter into service with the local gentry. But Sarah was a diligent young woman and she soon reached the height of her profession as a cook.
In 1844 she married Wilfred Nelson. Wilfred worked as a farm labourer and part-time grave digger, but he was unable to earn enough to support his wife and two children. Sarah worked hard taking in washing and making cakes and pastries for Lady Farquhar, in her home at Dale Lodge in Grasmere.Around 1850 a small cottage known as ‘Gate Cottage’ then became available for rent. Gate Cottage had been built in 1630 by public subscription as the village school. Education was not compulsory at this time, and it was only the village folk who could afford the penny a day to send their boys to school. Once education became compulsory a new school was built nearby to accommodate all the village children, leaving the Nelson’s to take over the tenancy of the property. At her new home, Sarah was encouraged by Lady Farquhar’s French chef to make Gingerbread. As the Victorian tourists passed by, they would see Sarah donned in her white apron and shawl sitting out in her cobbled yard selling her wares of Helvellyn cakes, aerated water and most importantly her Gingerbread. Sarah’s Grasmere Gingerbread became renowned, and soon she was wrapping it in pure vegetable parchment printed ‘None Genuine Without Trade Mark’. The recipe was locked away in the local bank vault. Sarah abandoned her parlour, and hung a curtain across her kitchen to form a passageway from the door through to the diminutive shop. Sarah had now established herself as ‘Baker and Confectioner of Church Cottage, Grasmere’.

I visited the shop and purchased a 12 pack of Gingerbread, it was delicious and once home I realised that  I should have purchased more.
Then it was a tour over to the coast and down to Barrow-in-Furness where I stopped for dinner at a nice pub. This was an eventful trip as the car broke on the way. I had to put a new clutch in the car about a month previous and 2 shift rod bushes fell apart and I had held them in place with cable ties and one broke and the linkage fell off and left me with only 3rd & 4th gear. It took me 30 minutes to fix and I was lucky I had some spare cable ties to fix it.

On the Sunday I headed home early as I was concerned about the gear linkage coming off again.