Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Weekend in Durham, England – Part II

We woke up bright and early and hit the roads at 8:30am…

YEAH RIGHT

Haha...

We CJ got up at 9:30am (I woke up at 7am! *smirk*) and we finally hit the road at 10:30am, starting our 2-hour drive to Lake District – the highlight of my trip.

CJ’s role was to drive.

My role was to read maps, read the pre-printed road directions, read the road signs (speed reading at its most advanced level when the car is whizzing by at 60-80mph), pass him food when he’s hungry, make conversation so he doesn’t fall asleep (which wasn’t hard because I can talk all day long), answer his phone when it rings, make phone calls on his behalf and of course, read and reply sms-es that come through. Can I remind you at this point that I’m the guest?!! One heck of a busy guest, I tell ya…

BUT it was all worth it!

The drive was scenic…


And after 2 hours, we arrived at Keswick, the town that is in the heart of Lake District.

Where I saw a restaurant that serves R-E-I-N-D-E-E-R!

Haha..ok, actually I don’t know if they serve reindeer. It just looked like they do!

Chanced upon a beautiful little shop that sold the most unusual teapots!

Cute eh?

And my favourite?



CJ planned for us to climb the mountain (a 3-4hour climb on a good day) but it was too cold and misty that day so we didn’t climb the mountain in the end…

See how the top of the mountain is hidden by the mist? The heavens have descended!

We decided to go for a drive around one of the beautiful lakes instead.

This is, after all, Lake District.


Saw some little feathered friends up close...


Nature is indeed magnificent!

After spending half a day there (it got dark before 4pm), we made our 2-hour drive back to Durham to have dinner with CJ’s friends (the Monopoly bunch from yesterday).

The day ended at 3am. It could have ended at 1am but I was "abducted" and made to do something errm...not quite legal, ya see... Tsk tsk... So now I HAVE driven a manual car. 30 minutes and the engine must have died on me about 8 times? I can now safely say that the decision to learn to drive (yes, I'm at the learning stage still!) an auto-car was the right decision.

Final day tomorrow...

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