Lots of water and little cake

It's been a busy weekend during which I seem to have been mostly eating as far as I can remember. I could likely get away with skipping meals for the next few days with no ill effects. I've been up in Glasgow for Bert's flatwarming, which we followed with a bonus night in town to allow us to go for a walk on Sunday and today. The Sunday walk was possibly the wettest walk I have ever been on in my life. I did walks in America's Grand Canyon which involved wading through water more than waist deep and/or swimming but I think I ended up wetter on Sunday.

It just rained and rained and rained. And then it rained some more. We climbed a big hill but the view from the top was just rain. At the end, I was literally able to pour the water out of my boots.

All my money also got quite yet and I've been paying for things with damp notes ever since. Curse you, soggy Scotland.

On the way home today we made two major stops. Initially, Kendal. Kendal is famous for two things, and two things only - first, being on the edge of the Lake District and second, it is the home of Kendal Mint Cake. I had been led to believe that Kendal was full of Kendal Mint Cake. On every street corner would be a young scamp slyly eating a bar or two between meals. Old men with sticks would give it to their old wives to compensate them for returning late from the pub again. Vendors would sell the stuff from wheeled barrows, shouting cries of "Come and buy your mint cake, lovely mint cake, come and get it whilst it's minty and hot". None of this was in evidence.

It took us a long time to find somewhere that actually sold the stuff at all. It was like going to Paris and finding that souvenir shops have stopped selling 6 inch high scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Tres disappointing. But in the end we did track some down, not in a proper shop but instead in the tourist information office (the only information we wanted was to know where we could buy some bloody mint cake).

If in the unlikely event that anyone from Kendal is reading this, I'm sure that you have a lovely town. You just need to work on your USP a little more.

Our second stop was Teesdale High Force. Rather than being an action packed B-movie, this is in fact a waterfall. Quite a big one by English standards (but quite small by the standards of the rest of the world). Here's a picture of it, brought to you here by that old law that commands people take photos of every waterfall they pass, whenever humanly possible:



The photo isn't actual size.