The picture above is from one of my few days traveling alone during my whole trip to England. I was in Oxford, restless, done revisiting that city but not sure where to go next or how to get there. I was longing to go north, and I kept thinking of the beautiful youth hostel where we stayed during Wheaton-in-England that sits right on the edge of Lake Windermere. At 10am I left the youth hostel in Oxford with my pack, walked to the train station not sure what would happen. I asked about getting to Windermere and was told that if I took the next train to Birmingham and switched trains a couple of times, I could be there by midafternoon. I paid and took the train to Windermere and then took the youth hostel shuttle to Ambleside.
During my one full day there I took a boat/hike trip, where a lake cruise boat took me across the lake and dropped me off at a remote dock next to an old boathouse, and I then hiked along the edge of the lake for several miles until I reached another boat cruise stop where I could be picked up. It was a typical Lake District Day - gray clouds and mist hovering over and around the green fields that border the lake, a little drizzle here and there, and a few moments of sunshine now and again. I had planned on doing this excursion but that day I hesitated to buy my ticket, worried the rain would pick up and I'd be left stranded on a remote edge of a lake with a couple hours of hiking through the rain ahead of me. But I dreaded the prospect of spending my one full day sitting inside the youth hostel. I was a little tempted to curl up with a Jane Austen novel and consider it a "stay inside and read and drink tea" day, but my room didn't even have a lake view, so if I did that, I could have been anywhere. Determined to not be paralyzed by indecision (which was a big issue for me when traveling by myself), I marched over to the ticket office, got my ticket, and hopped on the boat to begin my adventure for the day.
This picture is the bottom of the door of an old boathouse, many of which sit along the lakeside hidden in coves and under the low branches of trees. While the boathouse looked so old and battered and "in need of a makeover" by tv standards, it also drew me towards it with its humble, beautiful, stone architecture and this little door on one of its side walls. I loved this door - its age, the layers of paint peeling off and the spreading moss and mold adding their own colors, the dampness of the air seeping into the wood, and that strange little keyhole, installed so low that I had to kneel on the ground to get level with it. For some reason the builder put that keyhole only a few inches from the ground. I loved the mood of the grey gloomy day and of the mysterious stone buildings, sitting there by the lake alone, no longer in use as far as I could tell. I wished I could slip inside and dangle my feet over the water that lapped under their slate roofs. I wished I could know the stories that lie behind a door like this.
Below is a link to an album of other pictures from this day of solitude. Despite the gray, it was a beautiful day... probably because of the gray weather, actually.
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