Wetheral

Today - the train to Carlisle, and then drove to Wetheral (on very small country roads) - which I haven't visited since 1961.  We used, on special occasions (like a grandmother-visit) to have lunch here at the Crown Hotel - where we are, indeed, staying.  I remember it surprisingly well - the pretty little station (here's the view from the small waiting-porch, onto a fabulous English garden;

the walk over the Eden river by the side of the railway (and here I'm holding a photo I also took this morning of my father's painting of the view over this viaduct);

walking in the woods towards Great Corby (and yes, that brown thing is a red deer);

wonderful lichen (on gate posts and trees)

and yes, it is very, very wet.  But it all smells the same as it did sixty-ish years ago, and it sounds the same, and it's very magical to be back.