the Lakes

I've just realised that we never went to the Lakes this summer. Not even a day trip in the car. Looking for something else in my tiny study, and dragging out all of my drawings books and diaries, I found these watercolour sketches from a trip a couple of years ago and that's when it hit me - we didn't go to the Lakes this year. No plodging in the cold bronze of Lake Ullswater, or devouring vinegary chips in Bowness. It's a measure of how fast the summer flashed by that we didn't get to Lakeland this year. I've been on the Algarve teaching in a beach hut and I've been sipping pastis on a boat beside Notre Dame with J. and Panda - but I've not had a cup of tea in Ambleside or Grasmere and that seems weirdly remiss.

When I was a kid we used to go several times a year on runs-out. It was close enough to get there and back in a day from Newton Aycliffe. We also had a few holidays there. The classic parched summer of 1976, we were in a caravan park on a farm, with a bull in the next field and horses everywhere. I remember being in the Lakes almost every year. Picnicking at Tarn How, or yomping about uphill in the mist at 7 a.m to visit some Roman remains. Buying flipflops in Penrith. Walking miles and miles on a Geography school trip when they paired up our class with all the kids from a borstal. Staying in a fancy hotel with silver service, right on the edge of Ullswater.

My earliest memory of being in the Lakes is one of those days it was hoying it down with rain, and sitting in the car with the windows wound up - grandparents, parents and me at about the age of three. Eating hot dogs out of the tin and Tudor Sweet and Sour crisps, singing Yellow Submarine. Passing hot tea round in the flask. We were in a lay-by trying to see through the wet trees to the lake beyond and the rain was coming down in sheets.

It's sunny there too, sometimes. And in autumn it gets pretty spectacular. I hope we'll make the trip again before long.