O'er moorland and brae: Bluebird of happiness

This trip is a little like our last trek up this way so we are remembering good times past. We call in at St Bee's Head, the start of the Coast to Coast Walk that we did with a group of friends in 2005, where fat cows are still chomping at the rich pasture overlooking the bay, and the hill start to our walk around the headland and across England looks just as inviting now, as then.

We wonder if we could do it all over again. We doubt it, but wouldn't it be lovely.

We drive up to the Slate Mine at Honiston Pass and are stunned at the critically steep grade of the road. Yet, on the C2C, we walked down to the Slate Mine from Haystacks. So very much higher still. However did we do it?

We keep going to a lot of Ooo-aaaaahs! at the scenery of the Lakeland tho' we have been here more times than we can count. It just never wears thin with us. This is the land that inspired Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter; and writers and travellers throughout the ages have raved about it in superlatives. We think it is among the loveliest of lands we have ever visited. There are not many that match.

We drive down into the heart of it, and have to fight for road space with the tourists. This is the bad part. We think we own it, that we have a right to it, that the tourists who are out filling our streets, eating ice-cream, on these sunny days should go home. Possessive.

We stop for a coffee on a back road trying to escape the crowds, at a place called Bluebird Cafe, enchanted by the gondola steaming up the water. We only wake up when we look at photos on the wall behind us that this was where Donald Campbell's Bluebird broke all those water speed records, way back; and where he died, attempting to do so one more time. Coniston Water.

The only Bluebird we find here today is a kayak. Manouevred by a lovely man we chatted to on his first day out on the water starting at the top of his brand new very hopeful Bucket List. He has, only this week, been declared well by his medicos after years of worry, so promptly bought a boat off his neighbour and here he is, today, out on the water, training for his record. Today is the first day of the rest of his life. And life simply does not get much better than this.