To recover from the boat trip we spent two weeks in the Lake District to enjoy the spectacular landscape and a Blues Music Festival.  Apologies to our chums from ‘Oop North’ if any of our comments cause offence, but hey, sometimes we felt like Aliens observing life Jim, but not as we know it.

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We’ve also experienced more traditional British summertime weather, wet, windy and cold.  We did get some walking in but the weather wasn’t good enough to make the effort to get to the top of Ska Fell Pike…….if we had gone up all we would have seen would have been low cloud!  We’ll have to leave that to another day and make do with lake walking and some lower level fell walks.  It is very beautiful here but this is the second year running that we’ve been disappointed with the weather.  We always compare the weather with Bristol and it’s invariably around 3Deg cooler up here in The Lakes and a whole lot wetter!  The weather might not have been great but we did see a red squirrel which was a first for Cheryl.  It was a fleeting glance but welcome all the same.  We’ve done a lot of walking over the years but we’ve never seen or eaten so many wild raspberries….they were so delicious!

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Our weekend in Maryport was excellent and, as we did some homework via youtube on the performers, we enjoyed it even more than last year.   We really love the mix of main stage and pub venues through the town.  Standout performers this year were Aaron Keylock (watch out for this young man……we think he has a great future), Andy Fairweather Low (at 69 years he’s still rocking and had everybody leaving at 11.45pm singing his old songs), The Stumble (what a front man), Earl Thomas (wow, an American with an amazing voice and a great showman), Howlin’ Mat (a real blues man with his homemade cigar box guitar), The Jar Family (such energy and versatility from 6 guys of which 5 of them are singer/songwriters), Henrik Freischlader (fantastic German guitar player and Neil loved his tribute to Gary Moore), The Jack Kilner Band (great throaty voice), Crosscut Saw (gruff voice and interaction with the pub audience especially as it was midday after the long night before) and the final show on Sunday evening The Mersey Delta Blues Band (they produced a great atmosphere in The Sailor’s Return where we sat high up on a windowsill to get a better view). 

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Much to our amusement life in this Northern town turned into a jungle on a Saturday night especially at Festival time.  The guys and the gals come out to party and, of course, the gals liked to put their glad rags on.  Sadly, for many of the 50+ gals the glad rags meant something that would have been questionable 5 years ago and generally worn by gals around 30 years younger. Unfortunately, the very worst examples also favoured the Tango orange tan which didn’t really compliment their time ravaged faces which were giving up the battle with gravity, slowly sliding southwards like melting wax.   There was a huge amount of dimpled and wobbly flesh on show as they were well hardened to the climate, thankfully some of it was covered up by tattoos of all shapes colours and sizes.  It really wasn’t pretty, sometimes we had to look the other way and they always seemed to travel in a trio with mouths wider than the Mersey Tunnel.  To be fair, they were just out for a good night out and they were determined to have one but many didn’t show respect to the performers or other Festival goers who actually  wanted to listen to the music……they just gossiped, loudly, without pausing to draw breath!  Also to be fair, when you looked at them and heard them it’s no wonder that all the men were in a different pub!

There was a very disappointing side to the Festival that seemed to be worse on Saturday night as lots of young folk descended on Maryport just to sit around the streets and chat, shout, eat snacks and, of course, drink.  When we left the main stage in the Marquee at close to midnight the streets were almost deserted as the cold and damp weather drove them into the pubs.  Devoid of people the extent of the carnage left behind in the streets was appalling despite their being lots of biffa bins for the rubbish.  It was shocking but by midday on Sunday morning it had all been removed.

Maryport Festival was fantastic but the organisation of the bar and food outlets at the main stage was so amateur.  Despite having a capacity of around 1000 people the bar couldn’t cope with demand.   Friday night was Andy Fairweather Low night and whilst at the bar Cheryl heard the bar staff tell a roadie that A F L was not going to get a red wine as they had run out.  Not sure if he is a Diva but I wouldn’t want to be the one to bring the bad news.  The worst thing was it wasn’t replenished all weekend! By Saturday the white wine had also gone leaving the sickly sweet Rose.  Cheryl took to bringing her own wine and as we planned an afternoon at the main stage on Sunday she went armed with wine and tonic water to at least be able to enjoy a G&T.  Of course by this time they had no ice.  Then the ice arrived, and then they realised there was no gin! Eventually, success and Cheryl had a couple of doubles with lots of ice in quick succession before they ran out again.

There was little in the way of choice for food…a separate van parked outside serving poor quality burgers, chips and hot dogs and on Sunday there wasn’t even that……all shut!  Cheryl realised she needed carbs to absorb the hastily quaffed gin and had to run back towards the nearest small snack shop where the only savoury snack was some awful XL cheese crisps.  She also had to run back to get away from one of the creepiest shopkeepers she has ever met.  ‘You’re a pretty lass’ he oozed, ‘you’re not from round here….are you?’ and worse still, ‘If you want something savoury you could lick my arm’  eeeew!

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The whole food scene wasn’t a complete disaster.  We needed dinner on the Sunday and the pubs were just too busy and noisy to be able to sit down and enjoy a reasonable meal.  Neil kept talking about the Indian restaurant but we had always shied away from them having had so much of the real thing.  Cheryl wanted to go to The Golden Lion but it was packed and a burger was definitely not going to happen especially as it was shut!  So, the Indian it was and……..mmmmmmm……it was very, very good indeed!  We did pledge to go back but then decided that ‘you should never go back’ as it’s never the same.

The last week was spent recovering from the late nights of the Festival and taking as many walks as the dodgy weather would allow.  We soon realised why there were so many lakes – it rarely stops raining!  On the upside, it’s incredibly lush with more than fifty shades of green as well as the browns and purples of the peaks.  In fact, we think it looks better under the contrast of grey and moody skies.

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Edinburgh and The Fringe next followed by a real treat for Neil on his upcoming birthday.