There are few things that we believe you should all know before actually going on a trip to Lake District... Let us first briefly tell you why... we did a wild camping trip in a campsite last week, and we even took our own bike there from Leicester to Lake District. The first night was horrible and unforgettable... it was not only raining, but pouring... all of us were literally soaked... and we spent few hours cycling to the campsite from Windermere railway station. We planned to do that but then we realised we could never make it there by midnight so we called a taxi instead. And the nightmare had just begun...
Continue Reading: Driving around in Northern Ireland
What to Do
1. Reserve a Space for Your Bike before Getting on the Train
This is very important if you are taking your own bike on Train. We didn't know that so we just brought our bicycles on train. And we were refused to get on the train because we didn't make the reservation for our bikes... and this was why we arrived there late like 7pm.
2. Everything Waterproofed
This is extremely important and we mean it. We literally wore everything waterproofed so which was good. However, we put our sleeping bag on top of our backpack... so our sleeping bag was soaked and not even dried for the second night. We were sleeping underwater, seriously.
3. Levens Hall Worths a Visit
This historical place reminds us of the well-known movie Edward Scissorhands (1990), and we found the garden so much like a secret garden that we'd get lost. There were so many plants and trees in different shapes! If you are also interested, you can have a look here.
4. Go Ape! Go Wild!
We did a Tree Top Adventure there and it was amazing! We had so much fun there climbing trees and ropes! We were so scared at the beginning, not sure if we should really let go but we were glad that we did. We spent almost 5-6 hours there and we ended up sleeping inside the taxi back to our campsite.
What NOT to Do
1. Do NOT Go Wild Camping under Bad Weather Conditions
Otherwise you would end up like what we experienced...
2. Do NOT even Think that You Could Really Cycle in Lake District
We were arriving late on first night and we spent like 2 hours cycling and we only reached 1/3. (When Google maps indicated it should only take an hour to finish the whole route...) The second time we actually cycled for the whole route from our campsite to Go Ape! in Grizedale where Google maps almost showed us the same thing but it took us 4.5 hours to finally get there... And that was the last time we actually cycled and the rest of the time in Lake District were by taxi...
Why would that happen? Simply just because everywhere were uphills and mountains. There was no way for us to even walk with our bike! It was a terrible experience!
3. Only Going there if You Could Drive
None of us can drive. And that was why we thought we could cycle instead, which we really couldn't. We ended up taking taxis all the time. And this made our total travel expense for this trip went up a lot higher. That was the very first time we wish we could really drive.
We hope you will have an unforgettable trip in Lake District in a positive way. Good luck!