Mick & Lyn's overseas adventure 2013: Saturday 20 July 2013. Lake District. Grasmere, Coniston Water, Ulverston, Cumbria Crystal.

A cooler cloudy day forecast for today with a max of 25c which was probably about right.

We counted 20 small sailing boats on the part of Lake Windermere that we could see from our cottage and Mick said that if we extrapolated that figure with the usual 1 boat during the week and applied it to weekend road traffic that would equal 20 times more cars on the road.

Today, we decided to attempt a circular drive around Coniston Water and Lake Windermere.

We headed north on the A591 and decided first to visit Grasmere, a small village which is reached by driving through Ambleside and Rydal.

Grasmere is a lovely village with a small river running through the town centre. The poet William Wordsworth lived in Grasmere for 14 years and described it as "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found". The main road passes over the river on an ancient stone bridge (don’t they all?) and we arrived to find lots of people sitting outside cafes and restaurants eating and drinking and others looking through the items in the tourist shops.

St Oswald's, the Grasmere local church, also had many stalls in the church yard selling lots of home made foods and craftwork.

Lyn bought herself a couple of items in a shop that offered free jelly babies to the customers as they walked around. The shop assistant had to have two attempts to get her old machine to accept our travel card which means we will now have 2 transactions on our card, one of which will spend 4 or 5 working days on our transaction list before it is marked as a refund. It has happened previously.

After Grasmere we drove back down the A591 and joined the A593 towards Coniston which turned out to be yet another pleasant town full of people enjoying the warm weather..

Mick wanted to take the non-descript road down the eastern side of Coniston Water which runs very close to the water but within a few hundred metres of taking it, we had to reverse back quite a way to a passing point to let other traffic pass on the single lane road.

Lyn said she did want to go that way as it was too stressful so her dutiful husband, Mick, capitulated and returned to the A593 which at least almost fitted 2 cars side by side. This road travelled on the western side of Coniston Water but at times had some quite good water views.

If you think Coniston Water sounds familiar it is probably because it is the body of water on which Donald Campbell was killed on 4 January 1967 when attempting to set a new world water speed record with his boat called The Bluebird.

Donald followed in his father, Malcolm’s, footsteps as a British speed record breaker and he broke eight world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records (1964).

After the crash, despite extensive efforts by a team of Royal Navy divers, although Bluebird's wreckage was located on the 5th of January, on the lake bed, Donald Campbell's body was not located until 34 years later in 2001. Sad really.

After passing the most southerly part of Coniston Water Lyn’s eyes lit up when she saw a sign for Ulverston where the Cumbrian glass works we visited the previous Monday is located.

She had been stewing over missing out on buying a lead crystal swan of the type which we saw being made on our previous visit because whilst she had been discussing buying the last one on display with Mick, another woman had grabbed it.

Mick said as it was only 8 miles down the road we could go and see if any of the ones we saw being made were ready for sale. Much to Lyn’s delight they were and she exited the Showroom with a big grin clutching her new purchase.

With Mick reflecting on the true saying “A happy wife is a happy life….” we went into the huge Booths garden centre for a snack of scones with clotted cheese and strawberry jam plus two Café Lattes.

We then joined the Sunday drivers on Saturday and headed back home.