Sunday’s sojourn – Edges of Ambleside

April 14, 2024 / Leave a Comment

Waterhead to Ambleside; it’s a walk we do often. We park the car near the ferry point in Waterhead and do the thirty-minute stroll into the town.

(The MV Swam; a beautiful way to arrive at Waterhead. But that’s for special days. Usually we drive the first leg of the journey)

Leaving Waterhead, we hug the coast of Lake Windermere by cutting through Borran’s Park – a place unseen by many visitors, who hike by on the road, not realising that one of the best views of Windermere is only 100 metres away…

(Above: the view back down the lake from Borran’s Park. The sky reminds us that, though it’s April, the cold and windy season is by no means over)

(A cherry-blossom tree in Borran’s park. A Japanese gift to the people of Ambleside to mark their connections)

As Waterhead falls behind us, the views through the fields on the outskirts of Ambleside reveal the High Fells.

(Above: The Fairfield Round – a ring of high fells, north of Ambleside. This ‘corrie’ is the ancient source of the glacier that carved the northern half of Lake Windermere)

It’s worth seeing how vast that landscape is from the air. This is a map of the whole of the Fairfield Horseshoe. Diagonally, it connects Rydal and Helvellyn–right across the centre of the Lake District.

(Above: The whole of the Fairfield Horseshoe. Map sourced from Apple Maps, edited by the author)

(Above: the best way to see the size and mass of the Fairfield Horseshoe is from a boat on the lake)

(The edge of Ambleside town: a wider ring of mountains in the near-distance)

Soon after that, we’re in Ambleside. The photos are not all from the same day. The shot below is typical of the relentless wet and windy weather of the past two months.

(Above and below: two shots of Ambleside. The one below was taken in the summer)

(Above: Ambleside town – photographed in May 2023)

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©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)