Mary Poppins!

Where to walk on a very windy, cold first day of February?Buttermere circuit is a lovely easy gentile walk in dramatic mountain scenery with Fleetwith Pike towering steeply over the Lake or maybe it should be called a 'mere'. I have walked around Buttermere many times and have climbed all of it's surrounding hills with lots of happy memories. I once brought a group of artists to the Lake shore, the weather was a little showery to say the least, but with Umbrella's, packed lunch and all painting gear we set up camp on the northern shore and tried to produce something worth getting wet for! It really can be quite fantastic watching the weather approach in the Lake District, and sitting under a large golfing umbrella you can quite appreciate it and keep fairly dry. On this particular day we had been painting for about one hour when I heard a little scream, one of the golfing brollies had taken flight and was swirling into the air and heading down the lake, luckily with no artist attached, the wind suddenly dropped and so did the brolly into the centre of the Lake and sunk straight to the bottom. Now I did feel a little guilty about littering up the lake, but it was a ' National Trust' umbrella, so maybe that wasn't too bad!!