Ulverston

Hello again! So as promised, here is blog post number 2 for the evening.  Before I get into anything fun about my day, I wanted to post some pictures of my host family's house (I know this sounds really creepy, but I thought seeing it might be cool.)  First, Jan and Andy live right in the middle of Ulverston.  Now saying that, you probably already think you know what their house is like, but you're probably mistaken.  They're house was huge! It was off a main little street back in an alcove.

Here is their house. You walk down a little alleyway and there it is!

Here is my room.  It was attached to my friend Katelin's room.  It was so nice to have a big bed again!

Here is the bathroom.  That tub and I did some serious bonding this weekend.

Here is the living room.

Here is the kitchen.

There were a lot more rooms, but I just took pictures of the rooms that I spent time in.  They also had a dog (a labradoodle) named Megan. 

We all really enjoyed Megan's company. (She also posses really well for pictures.)

Ok, so now that you have seen my homestay, I'll tell you about my day.  Last night, Andy had mentioned going on a hike up to this lighthouse monument that overlooks the ocean and Ulverston (I think he meant it jokingly), but we said that we would really like to go.  So, we got up early, put on lots of layers (because they said it was really windy at the top, which it was by the way) and headed on our walk with Andy and Megan.  

This gives you a little bit of an idea of how far up we walked. It was a pretty good trek.  We went all the way to the top where the lighthouse is.

Here is some background information about the lighthouse. The hill that it sits on is called Hoad Hill.  the lighthouse was built as a memorial for Sir John Barrow who was born in Ulverston and was a naval officer.  It was modeled after the Eddystone Lighthouse (which is in Cornwall).  

It was a really nice walk (and very uphill) but the view was worth it!

This is the view of Ulverston from about halfway up the mountain.  

Here is the lighthouse at the top! (Fun fact: It is lit up at night.  This is the only thing that I could when we drove in to Ulverston on Friday.)

At the top, you could see all the way to ocean.

It was a really great view.  We walked down a path along the back of the memorial around some fields with sheep in them.  These sheep got really close to the path...and we took pictures with them.

By this point Andy was pretty embarrassed that we were taking pictures with sheep.  But hey, we never could get this close to them anywhere else we've been.

After our walk, we went back to the house.  Jan made us a Sunday "dinner" (which means a big meal for lunch).  We had roast chicken and potatoes.  It was also really amazing just like dinner (or supper as they say here) last night.  She also made us triffle (which is a featured dessert in Harry Potter and now makes sense to me). It was a layered dessert with cake soaked in a jam substance, topped with vanilla pudding and whipped cream.  Needless to say, it was great.

Once we were done with lunch, Jan took us on a mini tour of Cumbria (I'll explain what area this is in a minute) before taking us to the train station.  First, this is easier to understand with a map.  

Cumbria is the area of England that is know as the Lake District.  You can see the cities are in black and the lakes are in white. Ulverston is close to the coast at the bottom of Cumbria.  We drove around Coniston, Grasmere, Ambleside, and other towns to get up to Penrith to catch the train.

We drove around and admired the scenery and saw some of the literary places around the area.  We saw the area where Beatrix Potter (who wrote Peter Rabbit) lived and wrote,  where John Ruskins (poet and artist) lived and was burried, and where William Wordsworth (poet.  He wrote the poem "I wondered lonely as a cloud".  I think everyone had to read that in English class at some point).  It was really cool! Also, the small towns, lakes and hills made fore great scenery.

Here is a picture of the some of the scenery.  It turned out to be another pretty day.

Here's a picture of one of the lakes that we passed on the way to the train station.

We drove around for a long time and got to see lots of small towns.  It was all really quaint and just what you would picture small town England to look like.  Eventually, we had to go to the train station to get our train back to Stirling.  Before getting on the train Jan gave us a box of great stuff! (We got glasses, which I didn't have until until now, a tea towel from the area, and paintings that she found at other Fairtrades.  Also, she gave us lots of food!)  She invited us to come back again. We plan on going back before we leave in June. We had a great time! I was kind of nervous about my homestay, but I couldn't have gotten a better family.  It was an awesome weekend!  

Tomorrow, it's back to classes and back to pasta. (As a side note, all of the Scottish men wear kilts when Scotland plays rugby.  When we got into Edinburgh (we had to change trains in Edinburgh) the game had just finished.  We saw all of the men walking around in their kilts.  It was really exciting.)