Breakfast at Riverside began with a table of goodies and this welcoming sign as I took this fruit with my fresh orange juice and these jellies and coffee (decaf to be sure) were all represented on the menu as our main courses arrived to be enjoyed with locally made brown sauce.

After breakfast, we began a walk down the road towards town and beyond past houses when we ran into a school group out for a biology project and passed fields with sheep grazing and lovely ferns and moss (gentle reader, this will be all about ferns, moss, flowers, views and the occasional livestock photo; but, all delightful) ferns flowers this ram waiting to be shorn and then watched the school group cross the stone bridge and accumulate on the other side as we marched on to the bridge we were not to cross meeting this cute sheep along the way and then we were back to the ferns and this nicely flowered house with stone wall slightly mossed and then more ferns before this sign for the dog collection before we got our first view of the lake with Suzanne posing in front and this artistic dead tree as we walked on through views and ferns until we reached the quarried path and passed the first cave which was quite unreachable before we came upon the second, Rydal Cave, which is accessible but discouraged and then we continued our walk as we ascended and so the views became better and first flowers appeared along with ferns and trees and so it was ferns flowers and views as we began to see Grassmere in the distance and enjoyed views and closer houses before taking this collection of photos of ferns, moss and flowers

before noticing a deer ahead and then some remarkable moss

and flowers before being warned about the loud bangs with this sign as we walked past fields of butter cups and were now at the level of the houses in the village though we still had further to walk and more flowers to photograph as we passed estates like these and saw many bird feathers manors fields of butter cups moss and lovely yellow flowers before reaching the tea house which wasn't meant for windy cloudy days with rain threatening but we did enjoy this sign and did slow down as we came into town and found the church described as follows and entered. Although it was impossible to capture the sign boards in a photo we could capture the history and the memorial to Wordsworth and the Arctic explorer, Richardson. In the church yard, we found Wordsworth tombstone and the family grave site including his grave in their midst in this larger context and then followed a path of many names to get to the Wordsworth daffodil corner where Suzanne posed and we recorded more poetry before going to the gingerbread house which had this sign and the spooned garden as well as a lot of history before it was our turn to fit into the tiny shop and buy what was some remarkable gingerbread. We walked down the street where Suzanne met this friend and we walked over to Dove Cottage where Wordsworth had lived and did the tour but the light was limited and so the only photos I took were of this room where he had covered the walls with newspapers to make it less chilly for his children

Afterwards, we stopped at a tea house where this was not their wifi password but we met someone who loaned us his guide book so we could get the story of Allan Bank along with directions to reach it. Allan Bank is a house where Wordsworth lived for a few years (as S. T. Coleridge who was falling into drug induced decline lived with them). More recently, it was rented to various tenants and fell into disrepair before there was a fire there. They are thinking of redoing it and invite visitors to come have tea and explore the house and offer suggestions. The one room that has been done, in Coleridge's honor, is the library with a nice view even on the rainy day it had become but these were remnants from the fire in the hallway and this was a tour of the other rooms with room for suggestions in quite large rooms as we admired the floor boards and stairs and this note Wordsworth wrote to his beloved as we entered his study and then made our way to the kitchen for tea and watched mine develop as per the instructions to darker and even darker before our teas were side by side and accompanied by our gingerbread which tasted even better than it looked. We then caught a bus where water was sloshing from the upper deck under our feet and arrived in Ambleside where we visited the Royal Oak pub for starters and then had dinner at Zefferellis, the sister restaurant of Fellinis.