This is a trip round hidden Winderemere of places you may see
When I go away I always tend to wonder off the beaten track to understand what makes a place tick. Sometimes it’s fool hardy, with the hotel receptionist looking at me with ashen face when they’ve heard where I’ve been.
The town or is it a village of Windermere is no such place but there are hidden gems that the tourist doesn’t see as they rattle down the high street with the trolley suitcase bound for the lake or their bed and breakfast. The following is my small trip round hidden windermere tour.
The arrival of the railway in 1847 into the hamlet of Braithwaite – now Windermere – opened up the area to tourism and economic prosperity. By 1880 there were 40 known Lodging Houses – a few more now – but not everyone was keen in the coming of the railway – Wordsworth was opposed and fought against it.
There were plans to extend it to Ambleside and you can see where they started to make the cutting in preparation.
Opposite the station is The Windermere Hotel and if you walk up the path leading to Orrest Head you can see behind the hotel where the stables used to be.
Walking down the road towards Ambleside without cars it is very English with St Marys’ nestling in the valley. The church unusually has two clocks and used to have St Mary’s College adjacent but is no longer and is now St Mary’s Park a posh housing estate.
From here, there are two paths- one leads down to Adelaide Hill which is by the lake and the other, Old Collage Lane to where the old grammar school used to be.
if you go into the church – its open most days – ask to see the folder of boys who attended either this grammar school or the one at Troutbeck and died in the Great War.
Every Sunday morning whilst the bell was tolling, the boys would walk from the school to the church I wonder if they walked along Old College Lane?
The area where the school used to be – its now a stylish set of flats and apartments – has a football field and gravel running track around it. Blast out Chariots of Fire and your there!
I have always been fascinated by the houses around Windermere from the great, posh, nice, to the small, to the.. of dear. Windermere has its share.
Walk down Birthwaite Drive from the Ellerthwaite Hotel – Ellerthwaite being the the name of the second hamlet, with Applethwaite the third – and it is a pleasant walk with meadows on one side and huge houses with grand gardens, with of course, high hedges and electronic gates; KEEP OUT they seem to say – and you find an old petrol pump and a strange place for a post box.
The other estate that is amazing is the Droomer estate in nearby Calgarth were the huts that housed the factory workers who built the Sunderland Flying Boats during the war. After the war, in 1951, the Droomer Estate was built – I think its called social housing but today, walk through the estate and down through the ginnels and you can find every tradesman going and see the wonderful small gardens