Day 2: Ennerdale Water

When we woke up this morning the weather seemed distinctly better than it had last night

After breakfast we had a little stroll around the gardens where we're staying and then set off in the car.

We were heading towards Ennerdale Water, the most westerly lake in the Lake District, and also one of the least visited. It wasn't terribly easy to find, which perhaps sheds some light on why it's less visited, but we got there in the end - even if the journey was a little slow at times

As soon as we parked and walked out of the car park, we had a beautiful view of the lake.

While there were other cars in the car park, there weren't many other people visibly around, which was nice. I'd deliberately tried to find somewhere which would be reasonably quiet despite the fact that it was school holidays, and it seemed like I'd succeeded

It's possible to follow a circular trail around the lake, which is about 6.5 miles in total.

We decided not to do the full loop, because the final stage of the walk would involve climbing across Anglers Crag, which you can see in the photo below. The walk description referred to it as "a short exposed scramble" so I didn't really fancy it

Instead we planned to walk along the opposite shore of the lake, turning around and retracing our steps before we got as far as Anglers Crag.

It was a really lovely walk, even if the sky wasn't as blue in the Lake District as it had been nearer the coast.

There were little bits of sunshine through the clouds at times though

We reached the far end of the lake and crossed over a river.

There were some spectacular views here.

The path continued to be quite flat for a while, leading us towards a forest.

We walked around the end of the lake...

...and then started walking alongside the other shore.

The path started to get a bit rockier here...

...but the views were still really lovely.

We continued walking for a while...

...but decided to turn around at the point I didn't fancy crossing this stream

Then it was back the way we had come.

Across the river again...

...and back to where we'd parked the car.

From Ennerdale we drove back towards Whitehaven and decided to go and have a look at the coast. We ended up at a place called St Bees Head, a few miles south of Whitehaven.