Hidden away behind the hedgerows & woodland at the end of the Buttermere / Crummock Water valley sits the tiny hamlet of Loweswater, and its nearby lake namesake. There might not be much there, but what is there is full of history & an ideal location to spend my last night on my Western Lakeland Getaway. It was around 6pm when I pulled up in the Kirkstile Inn car park, named for the original name of the village. As soon as I entered the building you could feel the history of the place - how many pints had been drank, and how many conversations had been had over the four hundreds of years the Inn had stood here. I made my way into the bar and checked in. I was led through narrow twisting corridors, up stairs and through a door into my room. I was instantly struck, firstly as it was the first room I had had with its own hallway and its own (decommissioned) coal fire! There was a huge bathroom, and the bedroom itself had a vast double bed, and two windows set into the thick s

  Today was going to be my first venture over to the remotest of Lake District valleys - Ennerdale. This is probably the remotest part of Cumbria. No public roads go into the valley, and there are very few habitations within the valley - save for a farm, a field studies centre & a Youth Hostel. After checking out at the Strands Inn (after buying a few of their bottled beers to take home with me), I packed up my car and headed north west on the road out of the Wasdale valley towards Gosforth & picking up the A road north. At Calder Bridge, I then took the turning north east on the back roads to Ennerdale Bridge. This small village is still four miles from the valley, so I drove through the village & to the car park at the end of the road - Bowness Point. And that's all there is: the car park, with a few notice board signs welcoming visitors to 'Wild Ennerdale', & explaining the project to re-wild the valley, which has so far been going on for the last decad