Not the Lake District but it's still Cumbria

Can you see what I see?

  If you follow the west coast of England   northwards alongside Lancashire and     then Cumbria the last town you will         encounter before reaching Scotland is     Silloth. It overlooks the Solway Firth       and faces some of the lowland hills of     Scotland just a few miles across the        bay. Unlike some of the other fairly         industrial towns of the Cumberland         coast Silloth is a surprisingly tidy and     well laid out little place, it doubles as a  neat harbour and a seaside resort. It's    not so touristy now and its heyday was    in the Victorian era when trainloads of    Carlisle workers would come over to      enjoy a bit of sea and sun although we    spotted a number of caravan parks on    the town approaches. We were up too    late to come and take part in the    morning's Silloth parkrun so we nipped    in to Maryport, near where we were staying, and did the parkrun there. But on the Saturday afternoon we trundled up to Silloth and took a walk along the very pleasant promenade. The photo is of me and Skip and 'The Big Fella'.

I saw it first!

We're well away from the big Lakeland hills near Gilcrux which is a pleasant village north of Cockermouth. Primarily we've come somewhere fairly remote to escape New Year fireworks - Skip is terrified of all the bangs, you know firework displays years ago were all about the visual display whereas now it's all about the noise, the louder the better! Cockermouth is a well preserved, modest sized, medieval town tucked away in rolling countryside at the junction of the Rivers Derwent and Cocker. Here Vicky was examining an interesting War Memorial display with some odd looking metal daffodils sprouting behind her. You'll also see a wall painting advertising Jennings Ales and behind that building is the fast flowing river.

Until very recently Jennings was the pride of Cockermouth; the large brewery sits in the shadow of the castle and, between the two of them, these buildings dominate the town. In 2005 the brewery owners sold out to the national brewery chain of Marstons based in Staffordshire. "Don't worry," they said "we'll keep the brewery brewing." But the cynics who said they'd heard that before were proved right in 2022 when the brewery was closed and production transferred to a mega brewery in the midlands, sad days indeed. In our very convivial pub which we ran for a while about 20 years ago one of the popular beers that I sourced for our regulars, many of whom were fell runners, was Jennings Fellrunner Ale a beer now consigned to history...... but, hold on, in a local store we spotted some Bowness Brewery Fell Runner Blonde, on our first night in the area we cracked open a couple of bottles of this refreshing brew and remembered past times. Long may Bowness Brewery thrive!