Mirehouse Gardens in the Spring

Hi there everyone

I've got another post from last week's holiday in the Lake District for you today.

Sunday was the first full day of our holiday and considering we had put the clocks forward we were up fairly early by our normal standards.

Though the weather was predicted to get a bit wet and gloomy later in the week Sunday was a glorious day. We decided to make the most of it and headed for Mirehouse, which was literally five minutes up the road from Sale View.

We parked up in the car park opposite the house, which unfortunately for us didn't open until 30 March, the day we go home, but we were looking forward to exploring the grounds and having another walk down to St Bega's Church.

Even with the house being shut there was still plenty to see and we took the path through Mirehouse Wood, which would take us to the Bee Garden.

We gave ourselves a bit of a photography challenge for our visit ... we were looking for signs of Spring so it was a slow walk that we took as there was plenty to see on the way ...

Eventually we found ourselves at the Bee Garden ...

... where there were plenty more signs of Spring, though we didn't get to see any bees ...

From the Bee Garden we retraced our steps back to the main drive and headed left towards the house  which appeared in front of us as we rounded the bend ...

I think it would be fair to say that the views across the parkland to the lake and the hills beyond was pretty impressive ...

We wandered round the back of the house, which looked lovely in the bright sunshine and we would loved to have been able to explore inside ...

We had a quick wander around the Poetry Walk before heading back round to the front of the house ...

... where we followed the 'living wall' which we were both very taken with, down towards the open parkland ...

At the moment the parkland is home to some substantial works being carried out by United Utilities, who are in the process of installing 30km of twin water pipelines to supply drinking water from from Thirlmere across West Cumbria.

Whilst this work is obviously having an impact on the open countryside at the moment, care is being taken to ensure that footpaths are still accessible and it was actually quite fascinating seeing the size of the undertaking up close and personal ... 

Once past the pipeline works the views are more what you would normally expect from this part of the countryside at this time of year ...

We made our way back down to St Bega's Church, where we made the most of the weather and spent a fair while retaking our photographs from the evening before ...

We followed the lakeside walk back, which took us past The Tennyson Theatre & Pier and through Catstocks Wood ...
... where we saw plenty more signs of Spring ...
... before coming out right on the edge of the lake ...
From here the path took us away from the lake and back uphill through Crosthwaite Wood, back into Mirehouse Wood and the end of our walk.

It was but a short walk across the road to the Old Sawmill Tea Room for a very welcome pitstop before heading back to Sale Fell, where we explored the delights of the vintage book shelf and found all sorts, but I will tell you more about that in another post.

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We decided that it would be the seaside tomorrow if the weather was still good 🌞

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