August 9: Hill Top pilgrimage
Rain again, so a good day for a car ride and museum tour, right? Oh boy. Rachel's family actually live just outside and north of the National Park region official known as the Lake District. Most of my excursions thus far have been in the northern part of the Lakes. Today we ventured south for more wedding errands (the florist) and some sight-seeing. The problem with this part of the Lakes is, well, everyone in Southern England (from Manchester down to London) come up only as far as this part of the National Park on the weekend. And what would be one of the most popular stops, especially on a cold and rainy day? Hill Top, the house of Ms. Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter the Rabbit. Everyone, it seemed, had the same good idea.
The drive was lovely: rolling green hills, sheep farms and stone walls as far as the eye could see. We had to drive down the east side of the very long lake Windermere and take a very short ferry across to Near Sawrey, which is the small hamlet where Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top and wrote her 23 famed tales. It was absolutely down-pouring when we reached the house, only to find there was no available parking. Her house is along a busy yet narrow road with very little nearby. The cranky old lady museum volunteer told us to "go the the gallery and come back in an hour" which seemed like a ridiculous idea to us. The gallery was in town about 3 miles away. If we came back in an hour, she would tell us the exact same thing.
First we tried to reason with her and say we would wait by the side of the road until someone left. Oh no, she would have none of that. Then we parked illegally in a pull off reserved for bus service. But across the street we noticed a parking lot for two B&Bs, so we pulled in there. We shouldn't have parked there either, but one of the B&Bs (Buckle Yeat) had a tearoom! Wonderful, we will get some tea and then be legit. No go. The tearoom was not open, with no sign of when, or if, they would open. Screw it then. Leave the car, take the risk. Remember dear readers, it was POURING rain.
With the car finally parked, we walked the short distance to the ticket window and waited in a very long line, standing in puddles, to buy entrance to Hill Top. When we finally reached the ticket counter, two also cranky old lady museum volunteers were "managing" the crowd with the utmost inefficiency. The first sells you the ticket, and she didn't seem to know how the cash registered worked, and the second stapled your ticket to a map and told you where to go. The tourists in front of us were Japanese (I'm told the Japanese are crazy for Peter the Rabbit and friends. This doesn't surprise me since anything with a cute factor is popular with the Japanese, and how much cuter than Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton Tail can you get?). Well there were communication issues between the crones behind the counter and the young Japanese women. The solution, of course, was to talk louder and slower in English. What a mess.
As that was being sorted, we did manage to buy our timed tickets (an 11:30am entrance) while the staple lady was still busy with the Japanese tourists. GOD FORBID the cashier lady should do the staple lady's job. You should have seen the look and subtle but oh-so-telling dressing down the cashier received when she tried to be helpful. We couldn't get out of there and into the pouring rain fast enough. I should also mention that all of this is taking place in a tiny ticket office with one door in or out. The tickets sold were being tallied on a sheet of paper with check marks! No computers to be found. For such a popular attraction, you would think a proper ticket office and some sort of car parking queue would exist. Maybe, for example, you could buy your timed tickets ahead of time on the IN-TER-NETS? Just a thought.
We had about 40 minutes to waste before our entrance time. So we went back to the B&Bs to sit in the car, if need be. Hallelujah, the tearoom was now open! It occurred to me, as we were walking in, that the livelihood of Buckle Yeat B&B was entirely due to the flood of Beatrix Potter tourists who had to wait to see Hill Top. They opened for their guests' breakfast, closed at 10am and then re-opened just after 10:30am (along with Hill Top) for all of us. I did have a yummy scone with jam and, as always, a lovely pot of tea.
My watch battery died yesterday while walking Skiddaw and Rachel didn't have her watch on either, so we had to keep asking other tourists in the tearoom the time. When we were told "half past eleven" by a German chap, we nearly panicked! Oh my god, if we are late the old ladies will never let us in. Quick, finish your tea! Quick, get the bill! Now, of course, I felt like I was in another children's book about a rabbit who feared having his head cut off by a nasty old queen if he showed up late!
And I kid you not, yet another cranky old lady minding the entrance to Hill Top who was shouting for 11:35 ticket holders, dressed us down for being FIVE minutes late. She let us in, but not before directing us to remove our wet jackets and either hang them outside the house (and in the rain) or fold up and carry them with us. I felt so abused as I stepped over the Hill Top threshold, I was hardly in the mood to explore where Mr. Jeremiah Fisher was born.
Hill Top is a small house, as were many built in the late 1800s. Potter purchased this farm house in 1905 before she married. The rooms were small, the ceilings were low and the stairwells were claustrophobic-inducing. But everything was so very quaint and apparently arranged exactly as she instructed in her will. The most charming part of the self-guided tour was seeing the very fireplaces, rocking chairs, window seats and sitting rooms where many of her fictional creatures lived. The museum had Potter's books opened to her illustrations that included a bit of the room or a piece of furniture before you.
I learned from my guidebook and from Rachel that Beatrix didn't marry until she was 47. After becoming Mrs. Heelis, she wrote very few books and instead turned her attention to farming. She became a prize-winning Herdwick sheep breeder and played a significant role in forming the National Trust, a conservation organization for land and historic sites in the UK. None of this, by the way, is depicted in Miss Potter, the Hollywood film starring Renee Zellweger. The florist we visited today to sort out Rachel's wedding day flowers is a native of the Lakes. She declared, with disdain, "there isn't even one sheep in the film!" I had to laugh. This photo of Ms. Potter's vegetable garden is the only picture I took today.
Garden gate at Hill Top. If you look very closely,
you can see Peter the Rabbit munching carrots.
The gift shop was in a separate building, packed with visitors and carrying all-things Beatrix Potter, but very few things not made in China. (Side thought: Do you ever wonder, as I often do, what the Chinese factory worker might think about Westerners while she sews together her 1,000th Tiggy-Winkle toy of the day?) For all the fuss, we were at Hill Top for less than 30 minutes. The rest of the day was equally frustrating as we dealt with "nose-to-tail" traffic, rude shop keepers who hate tourists, pouring rain and full parking lots. It was a relief to get back to Jus Hus, eat the homemade dinner Rachel's mom had waiting for us, and watch another episode of Brideshead Revisited.