{"id":12183,"date":"2025-09-23T17:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/?p=12183"},"modified":"2025-09-23T17:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:48:09","slug":"tuesday-23-september-grasmere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/23\/tuesday-23-september-grasmere\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday 23 September Grasmere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very nice dinner last night at the hotel bar here at The Inn at Grasmere.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Simon ordering our dinner and a beer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a very efficient set up here, it seems small, personal and inviting but actually they can feed and house a large number of patrons. You have to book a time slot for breakfast, there are so many people staying here. It\u2019s big and rambling with three stories of bedrooms. \u00a0It\u2019s also full of character but with sympathetically modernized facilities. I love it.
\nAfter breakfast we drove to the Pencil Museum in Keswick, a nearby town. Enjoyed it far more than you would have believed. Graphite was mined out of the local hills in the 17 and 18 hundreds, there used to be a number of pencil factories here. At one time graphite was more valuable than gold. Did you know pencils were never made of lead? People think that because they\u2019re dumb and think anything soft and black has to be lead. Actually I must confess I believed it was true as well. I learned loads of useful facts at the museum – if you fill out a quiz of 20 or so questions, you win a prize. The test included an obligatory pencil sketch, so I did one of Simon. It was terrible but I blame the fact that he kept looking down at his phone and wouldn\u2019t look at me. Serves him right if it looks like a police sketch.
\n\"\"
\nAmongst many fascinating displays was the world\u2019s largest pencil.
\n\"\"They also had an art gallery of pencil drawings including this one. Not a particularly inspiring subject but the quality was amazing!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My prize was several more pencils on top of the one you get with your entrance fee – to fill out the quiz with – so of course I then had to buy a wee pencil case<\/p>\n

We had planned to go on and do a forest walk that had been recommended to us, but Simon was already fading. Considering he was recently very ill and only out of hospital a couple of days, he\u2019s doing extraordinarily well. So, instead we went back to the Inn for a nap.
\nBy midafternoon he was feeling revived enough for us to go on a walk around the nearby lake, just called Grasmere. It was very pretty, and it\u2019s another gorgeous day.
\n\"\"We were cautious but in the end did the entire loop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There were a number of other people on the walk but it wasn\u2019t unpleasantly busy. Many had their dogs with them. Dogs seem to be welcome everywhere here, it\u2019s clearly quite normal to take your canine companion on holiday with you. It\u2019s the best thing I know about the English.<\/p>\n

Our quiet country walk was also interrupted a number of times by jet fighters flying low overhead, which seems very out of place. There must be an Air Force base nearby somewhere. \u00a0No photos because they\u2019re so damned fast.
\nHaving skipped lunch after a big cooked breakfast, some of the famous local gingerbread was very welcome. Chewy, sweet and spicy, very nice.<\/p>\n

\"\"We plan to have dinner in the bar again tonight, why spoil a winning formula?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very nice dinner last night at the hotel bar here at The Inn at Grasmere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3av","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12179,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/22\/monday-22-september-grasmere\/","url_meta":{"origin":12183,"position":0},"title":"Monday 22 September Grasmere","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Here we are in Wadsworth and Beatrix Potter country: the Lake District. 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