November in the Lakes

After our first night (see the post here) we headed a little further into the lake district. I’d heard good things about the national trust campsite in Great Langdale so we booked it for a few nights, and ended up staying an extra one as we liked it so much. You’re surrounded by mountains, plenty of space and absolutely no phone signal which is ideal for silent and slow days. There’s a national trust pub just up the road that does hot food when you want a night off from cooking too. I will definitely be back here… it’s made it into my top 5 campsite list without a doubt.

At first I was a little bummed out as I thought they didn’t allow campfires, but we double checked at reception and they didn’t mind, and some guys who were working on the site actually put Steven in their van (willingly) and drove him to the other end of the campsite where they had some wood we could burn. I will never say no to free fire wood.

We like not really having any plans on these trips. It’s nice to drive about and see where you end up, then get out and explore. You never know what you’ll stumble upon, maybe even the headless corpse of a frozen deer. Lucky us.

I also remembered that frost is 100% my favourite weather to photograph in, and there’s genuinely nothing better than waking up to a crisp, bright, frosty morning. Especially when you’re in your own little cabin on wheels with a coffee brewing on the stove.

This trip was a test run of the van, and there’s a few little bits we know now to change, but overall it was ideal. We’re planning a longer journey in April (North Coast 500 here we come) and I absolutely can’t wait. There’ll be plenty of little ones until then though.

Broken Pots

 
 

Pulling an Ikea foam mattress through the house into the van single handedly caused a few casualties, a pair of plants in old stoneware pots broken on the floor. After a 10 second kick off I decided they looked quite nice in their broken form and it reminded me to pick up my camera more often for the less obvious things.

It also reminded me that winter light is probably my favourite and has the ability to make any room look considerably better.

For the sake of transparency, I’m still a bit livid about the broken pots though.

 
 
 

The First Night

Day after day of hard work on the van finally paid off. It was ready for a trip. I wouldn’t call it finished… we still need to perfect the storage space in some of the cupboards and put the sink in, but a trial run was definitely in order. There’s a few things we realised we didn’t need on this trip, and we figured out what things get used the most and need a better spot. I am genuinely excited to get back to work and reorganise it.

For our first trip we decided to stay close to home as we weren’t totally used to the van yet and it’s tradition for something to go wrong on the first night. Low and behold, on our drive to the lakes, a brake light went out. Not a big deal, we just nipped to Halfords. There were a few other little issues here and there but we figured everything out and it actually went pretty smoothly and we learnt that we should always keep a few basic tools in the van so we don’t have to pay someone to fit a brake light.

We stayed at Wallace Lane Farm just at the top of the lake district for this first night (more on the rest of the trip soon), parked up and plugged ourselves in. Literally the only reason we wanted electric hook up was for our little camping heater. Oh my god the heater. I feel like it needs a journal post of it’s own. We had our first night in the van on the coldest night of the year, woke up to frost everywhere, but we were cosy. £20 well spent.

We explored the site, ate dinner (steak, also a first night tradition), watched a film, read our books and woke up to coffee and breakfast before we headed off to go further into the lakes. Absolutely ideal.

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