Lake District 2023 - Day two

Friday 15th September and it was a wet start to the day, forecast to be clear in the afternoon so Captain Ken gave us a free morning. Dave chose to go and visit his childhood friend Phil, who lived in nearby Ulverston but hadn't been too well recently. The rest of us took a wander round Ambleside, read the papers and/or went for coffees.

It did clear by lunchtime but we had a planned early taxi ride to Elterwater for dinner that evening, which didn't leave much time for a long walk, so Ken's plan was just to take a fairly short stroll up to the Ambleside waterfalls:

 From there, we walked up one side of the river and noted that we were at low cloud level:

Soon, we came upon the newly refurbished Grove Barn cafe, where the temptation of some more fine local ale was a little too much for some, whilst others opted for teas and coffees:

Marching on a bit, we then crossed the river and started walking back down the other side towards Ambleside, enduring a couple of brief, but heavy, showers. No need to worry, however, Ken had factored in a visit to the homely old Golden Rule, where we all enjoyed a couple of beers before heading back to Brathay Lodge:

A quick shower and change, then we all jumped in to our 8-seater cab for the 20 minute ride to Elterwater. Our first stop there was to the hugely popular Britannia Inn (https://www.thebritanniainn.com/). After a couple of beers, we then took a 10 minute walk in gathering gloom to - would you believe it - a Greek-run tapas restaurant out in the sticks but surrounded by spectacular scenery:

It probably wasn't the finest tapas meal we'd all had but our host was a bubbly character and looked after us well. He proudly produced their own brand new house rum so Jeb decided to buy us all a dram to (slightly belatedly) celebrate his 65th birthday:

Note the superb, large scale local map which adorned two of the walls.

After that, we walked back to the Britannia Inn for a quick one before our return cab arrived.

Stats for today's short walk were: