Water we doing?

By hook or by crook we were jolly well going to go swimming this holiday.  After phoning places yesterday and different places today we couldn't figure out the whole booking thing and resolved to just turn up at an allotted time and try our luck.

So after a big old bowl of porridge and much checking of the weather forecast, we togged up in our cold weather layers and rode out in the drizzle, heading south.  Through Ambleside again and saying hello to the little house over the river we pushed on south and with barely 15 minutes in hand we arrived at the leisure centre in Kendal.  And after all that mucking around with stupidly complicated booking systems and phone calls, it turned out that we could just turn up after all.  And we had a good three quarters of an hour's swim!  Sadly no fancy sauna or steam room or jacuzzi were available so we just bashed up and down the lanes.

After an age getting back into our biking gear – we needed three lockers to stow it all, not including our helmets! – we ambled into town a mile or so to the multi-storey and parked up, and walked a short distance to a nice cafe I'd seen on the map (top left pic).  We enjoyed coffee and a sort of mini-Full English breakfast, although somehow it was gone three in the afternoon by then.

Duly recharged we rode south again on tiny roads to Stainton see the 'Northern Reaches" of the canal that went from Kendal to Lancaster.  Some of it has been restored while other parts are being restored or are still necessarily overgrown and no doubt the subject of civil engineering students' future dissertations.  Our main interest was Hincaster tunnel,  which was opened in 1817 and is 349 metres long. You can see right through from end to end.  It is still in amazing condition although there isn't much water left.  CanalGal kindly modelled the red plaque (bottom left pic) that celebrates the tunnel and also the path that the horses would take over the hill, since there is no towing path through the tunnel.  I spotted some little mushrooms growing out of a tree along the path.

The other part of the canal we visited was the monumental and rather pretty Stainton aqueduct, which has been restored and repaired after serious damage caused by floods a little while ago.  It carries the canal over Stainton Beck which was flowing well today.

Time was marching on so we made our way back to Kendal with the rain having moved away, and took the big roads back to Keswick, stopping at the shops for supplies while the evening sun disappeared, and it was dark by the time we rode back to our cottage.  Bestie made pasta for dinner while I made the fire, and all was well.