About Me

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Hi! I'm Eunice and I live in Bolton, Lancashire, with my two dogs Sophie and Sugar and an assortment of cats - well it used to be Sophie and Sugar, now it's Sophie and Poppie. I first began camping back in 1997 when my then partner took me to Anglesey for my birthday weekend. We slept in the back of the car - a hatchback - using the cushions off the settee at home as a mattress, and cooked and brewed up on a single burner camping stove. The site was good, the views were great, the weather fantastic and I was completely hooked. Following that weekend we got a two-man tent and some proper accessories and returned to Anglesey two weeks later, then over time we progressed to a three-man tent followed by an old trailer tent, then a new trailer tent, a campervan and finally a caravan. When my partner decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the street - literally - in April 2009 and I suddenly found myself alone after fifteen years, I decided there was no way I was going to give up camping and caravanning if I could cope on my own. This blog is the story of my travels, trials and tribulations since becoming a solo camper - I hope you like it

Sunday June 23rd 2019 Part 1 - St. Bega's Church and Mirehouse Gardens

The sun seemed to have gone on holiday that morning as there was a lot of pale grey and white cloud around but just occasionally I got glimpses of some blue sky up above so in the hope that it would come nice later on I decided to take myself off to find St. Bega's church on the east side of Bassenthwaite Lake and visit Mirehouse Gardens while I was there. 

Mirehouse itself is a country manor built in 1666 by the 8th Earl of Derby and in its lifetime it has only been sold once, in 1688. In 1802 it was left to John Spedding of Armathwaite Hall and various generations and members of the Spedding family have lived there ever since. Starting off as a smaller house it was added to over the years and adapted for several households to live there, and as it's still a family home there are only certain rooms which are open to the public. That being the case I decided that I would rather see the gardens than the house but first was a visit to St. Bega's Church situated in the Mirehouse parkland.

The church can be accessed without paying to go into the gardens, via a footpath a short distance from the garden entrance. It ran past the back of the gardens and across a couple of fields where several semi-comatose sheep were lying under a tree and eventually I arrived at the church which was surrounded by a medium height stone wall. St. Bega's dates from the mid 10th century though it was extensively restored in 1874; over the years it was visited by Wordsworth, Tennyson and Carlyle, and in more recent times it provided the setting for Melvyn Bragg's novel 'Credo'. Services are held there twice each month, it's also used for weddings and funerals and there are Bibles in 28 languages to make any overseas visitors feel welcome. It's quite a simple church and it didn't take long to look round before I collected Sophie and Poppie from where I'd left them, 'hanging' on a convenient railing just outside.




Walking back past the back of Mirehouse gardens I noticed two or three gates into the grounds with notices on them - 'Access for ticket holders only' - so I duly went to purchase a ticket from the tea rooms and handed it in at the entrance, where it was torn in half and one half given back to me. And I hadn't gone more than fifty yards or so when I discovered that I'd lost my half - it must have dropped out of my pocket when I fished out the map I'd just been given (or so I thought) so I went back to the entrance where I was told it was fine, no-one would challenge me anyway, and I was free to wander wherever I wanted.



The gardens were very extensive with several different areas but although they were very nice I felt that, unless I'd missed something, there was nothing really special about them - there were too many trees and not enough colour for me, though I could imagine the place would have looked quite attractive when all the rhododendrons were in full bloom. Once I'd seen just about every area I could see (with the exception of the adventure playground) I followed a path signposted 'Lakeside Walk' - and ended up in what I thought was the nicest part of my Mirehouse visit.





2 comments:

  1. I regularly used to take Ollie to St Bega's as by walking past the church we had great access the lake - and he did like his swims :-)

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  2. Hmmmm...I'd previously read somewhere that the only way to access the lake shore on that side was via Mirehouse gardens and only realised AFTER I'd got back from my lakeside walk (next post) that by going past the church I could have got there anyway - and probably walked round the gardens too without even paying!

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