Holiday Recap Part 2

Because of all the rain and gale force winds from Saturday and Sunday- most of the Lakes District was experiencing flooding. Thankfully, the road to our cottage was fine. There was some kind of marathon happening that weekend and many runners were stranded and had to find shelters in old barns, etc. It was pretty serious.

Monday, we drove over to Lake Windermere, this is where Beatrix Potter lived later in life and where she wrote most her beloved stories.

The beautiful Lake Windermere
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Gee, I wonder why Miss Potter wanted to move out of London for this place!

As you can see, major flooding-even park benches were under water.

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First we visited the Beatrix Potter Museum. It was just precious and the girls loved it! There were scenes from each of her stories and life-size animals, along with the history behind each story. It was really cute and the girls just loved it!
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The girls with Jemima Puddleduck

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Because of the flooding, the car ferry to cross Lake Windermere was closed so we decided to come back at the end of the week to see Miss Potter's farmhouse- Hilltop Farm. You can drive around the mountain to get there, but it takes a lot longer and we were low on petrol so we didn't want to chance it. On Thursday, when we made it back to Lake Windermere, the flood waters had receded and we were able to take the ferry across and over to Hilltop Farm. Thankfully we went first thing in the morning and got there right as it was opening at 10:30am. The tour does not take long, but since the BBC aired Miss Pottter the movie, they have been extremely busy with visitors. We were given a time of 10:35am to go inside the house and by the time we came out, the wait was over an hour long to even get a time slot. Thankfully we timed it just right!

The farmhouse was really neat, not much to see, but the tour guides at the door gave us a copy of one of her books to take around the house. Most of Miss Potter's stories were written from here and there are some illustrations from the house in each book so we were able to find each scene inside the house. Her story, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers was the book we were given and we were told that when we bought the house it was full of mice, so she borrowed a cat to get rid of them and that story is based on her trying to get rid of the mice. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, so this is the only photo I have from the outside.

Hilltop Farm
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I would have loved to have seen this house back in the day, of course there were quite a bit of houses near by, but back then it would have been the only one on the hill. Just beautiful.


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