Day 7 -- Grasmere

My arrival at Windermere marked the end of the Dales Way and completion of the first leg of my walk. The second leg begins Saturday with the Coast to Coast walk, a walk I did 17 years ago. Back then, I didn’t have any time to spend at Grasmere, a pretty little tourist village in a beautiful part of the Lake District. This time I allowed time to walk around the village today by taking a bus from Windermere to Grasmere. I’ll hike the nearby hills (or “fells”) around Grasmere tomorrow.

Although Grasmere village and most of its infrastructure are many centuries old, there are a few modern conveniences. Take this lovely car, for instance. I wanted to, but it was closely guarded.

 

 

One learns a lot walking around tourist villages. For one thing, where there are tourists, there must be toilets, and money is to be had by providing them.

 

Out in the countryside, there are lots of trees, so toilets aren’t actually necessary. But what I realized today is that you still have to pay to use a tree. That explains the money tree I saw a few days ago. I’ll need to buy a hammer at the next hardware store (“ironmonger”) I pass, so I can hammer my coins into the trees whenever I use them. I drink a lot of coffee so as the song says, “… I’ll hammer in the morning, I’ll hammer in the evening all over this land…” And a beautiful land it is.