Lake District Holiday - Day 2

Sunday, September 27th

I was so impressed with the church - not the building which is relatively modern (about a hundred years old) and undistinguished - but the whole ambience. (Note the heap of cushions ready for those who don't like to sit on a bare wooden pew.)

Even without realising quite how small Crook is I had been quite impressed when I looked at the website and discovered that there is a service at ten o'clock every Sunday, and driving past on Saturday the welcome sign added to that good initial impression.

Joe and I arrived at about 9.45/9.50 and were greeted by several people with friendly questions about where we had come from etc. It was a modern(ish) morning service, lay lead, with a congregation of around sixty. Apparently these numbers are normal from a village with a population of not much more than twice that number! (I gather a few of them come over from Kendal where the group's vicar lives, but I assume that most of those swell the numbers on communion Sundays rather than every week.) Afterwards we stayed for coffee and chatted to - among others - the local historian who was born in Lincoln.

The old church fell down just over a century ago, so they left the tower standing in lone splendour on top of the hill and built their new church more conveniently on the roadside.

We then went back to the cottage for a very light lunch and some more coffee, before heading for Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts house which several friends had recommended for a visit. Obviously they won't allow photography inside the house so here is a group of pictures from their publicity and a link to their website http://www.blackwell.org.uk/

Unlike Joe, I am not actually a huge fan of the arts and crafts movement, but I have to say that these interiors were absolutely lovely. I was also somewhat surprised to find how much I liked the current exhibition of Whitefriars Glass all dating from before the chunky stuff by Geoffrey Baxter which one tends to associate with the Whitefriars name. On the other hand I did not much care for the large commissioned sculpture on the lawn Black Dome by David Nash.

We then had afternoon tea (me literally with a set cream tea, Joe with a cheese, ham and wild mushroom panini) in Blackwell's cafe before driving into Bowness. This shopping trip on a Sunday was necessitated by one of the two drawbacks to Sander Hill cottage; the first is its lack of a washing machine (of which more later) and the second is that there are no provisions in the cottage not even a pot of salt. I think that this may be a policy of the letting agents windy of possible claims for food poisoning, but I would have thought a few basic seasonings and condiments, and small jars of sugar, tea bags and flour would be safe enough - especially where the owner is there to check and replenish each week. I remember Liz, with a lifetime's experience of holiday cottages, laughing at my over-packing of provisions the first time I rented one because (she said) the basic store cupboard was always supplied - as indeed it was on that and several subsequent occasions. However, this is the second time I have found the cupboard completely bare and someone whose daughter has the job of inspecting cottages told me that it was policy with her company. At the other end of the scale one cottage we stayed in in Allandale had a cupboard full of 'emergency supplies' - tins of beans and meatballs and the like as well as an assortment of packages with an injunction to replace like with like if weather or circumstances forced you to raid the stock, while another at Skirwith (lived in by the owners - curry connisseurs at a guess - for the winter months) had, among other supplies, the best stocked spice rack I have ever encountered.

Anyway, I bought salt and one or two other things I had omitted to pack at the Co-op, and some freshly baked bread at the deli, and we ate the other half of the chicken in baguettes with some more salad and loads of mayonnaise, and I made soup with the bones - hence the urgent need for salt.