Kendal; Sunday, 23 July, 2017

The original weather forecast had been dire for the whole weekend, but I woke on the Sunday morning to clear blue skies, so I had an early breakfast and checked out of the hotel to make the most of the day.

First stop was back over to the bus station to pick up the first bus of the morning out to the town of Coniston and from there a 15-minute walk down to the banks of Coniston Water. The lake is the third largest in the Lake District and like Windermere and several others has boat services running along its length to take in the views.

I boarded the first full lake tour of the morning and we headed south down the lake. About halfway down the captain had to suddenly shut down the engine as the warning lights had come on. After a short pause, he tried firing it back up again, but once again there were warning lights and buzzers.

After another couple of fruitless attempts to get the boat working again the decision was made to try and limp the craft back to the landing stage at the midway point and tie up there to wait for the half lake tour boat that was due a little later.

With the alarm buzzers sounding, and only occasional bursts from the engine to try to prevent any damage the captain managed to get us back to the landing stage where we waited for the other boat to come and rescue us and take us on a tour of part on the norther part of the lake. We didn’t get to see the whole lake, but as they had refunded us the full cost of the ticket you couldn’t really complain.

Back in Coniston I headed over to the bus stop and was just in time to pick up the bus back towards Windermere, choosing to get off in Ambleside for a late lunch.

From Ambleside, I hopped on the open-top bus back out to Grasmere to have a wander around the village before catching the first open-top bus of the evening that was heading all the way back to Kendal.

The bus got most of the way into Windermere in the dry but then the spots of rain started to fall and after living with it for a few minutes I decided to move into the covered area at the front of the bus. I was glad I did as a couple of minutes later, and with most of the seats now filled with other people having the same idea as me the skies opened and there was a massive downpour.

In Windermere, most people got off so I was able to get a seat right at the front to be able to take in the views in the dry all the way back into Kendal.

By the time we got back to Kendal the worst of the rain was easing, but it was still a pretty damp walk back to the hotel to pick up my luggage. Given that it was still raining I cheated and ordered a taxi to take me the half mile or so from the hotel to Kendal station where I picked up the train up to Oxenholme and changed there onto my train to Watford where I was going to disembark to have a night in the hotel there before heading into the office on the Monday morning.