Of course Bill it’s how we Londoners put everyone down 
Why do Londoners feel the need, to put ‘anyone at all’, ‘Down’ John.
Is it maybe, a feeling of, ‘Inadequacy/Inferiority’, some of you Londoners suffer from?
Quite sad really, if that’s your problem 
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It was The Salutation, which had an awful reputation.
I had my 25th birthday on Windermere.
Started at Storrs Hall and then went out onto the lake with a special picnic I made.
Then out to dinner in the evening.
I lived on the Lancashire/Westmorland border, half an hour from Windermere.
I had friends who rented an old iron boat The Raven on Windermere and I remember sleeping on deck in the summer as it got too hot below deck.
People thought because I Lived in Lancashire I lived in a mill town, when nothing could have been further from the truth.
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Houses are not cheap within the National Park.
Estuary English is appalling and the soft Cumbrian accent is musical by comparison.
I don’t know about Bill, but our lives take turns and we don’t all end up from where we started out.
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Fond memories of the dancing-goat outside the village shop, Kirkby Lonsdale.
Spent many happy holidays in a cottage there… and explored the magnificent countryside etc etc… wonderful !!!
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I do live in a Lancashire mill town, but within a short walk or an even shorter drive I can be in rolling, stunning countryside. I also have the advantage of large towns and cities nearby win win
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When I went up to stay with a friend near Burnley I was amazed how beautiful the area was, not what I was expecting. I think that I was influenced by the pictures I’d seen when the mills were all active, a real contrast to today.
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I still have the chest of drawers that I bought at auction in Kirby Lonsdale in my bedroom here in France and a wonderful print of a Breton fisherman and his wife, bought at the same time, hangs in a bedroom in our gite.
There is a fabulous cheese shop there now.
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Absolutely.
How long does it take to get out of London and into real countryside?
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Haven’t been back for more than 30 years… so it is bound to have changed a little… 
Very fond of Lancs’, (something to do with it being on the right side of the Pennines) some beautiful areas, great history, a County of contrasts
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Led Napes in the pi**ing rain and hiking boots one dark January day on a bagging trip on the way back to Staffordshire from having summited Ben Nevis - one of those crazy ass things that you never tell your mum about. Manteling onto the top was easy compared to reversing out that move back onto the face with my legs dangling trying to gain purchase. One of our party even put his socks on over the top of his boots, that’s old school climbing for you!
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Yes, interesting Maneuver Alex, 'twas easier to get on the mantle, than get off it, but for me at 14, what an introduction to rock climbing that was
Know what you mean 
. Bit like jumping across the top of Tryfan…young and immortal.
Free climbed, straight up (with a climbing partner) the rock face from Glaslyn to the summit of Snowdon in winter with ice axes and crampons. It was a relief to make it:sweat:
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Never got into ice climbing Mark, by the time I had the opportunity, I was in the MN, then got into sailing, so never went back to climbing after about 25 
I guess I liked it because I could rely on making my own holds, rather than trying to find fingertip edges, on slippery wet sandstone - yuk, and always falling off. Big bits of Lakeland or Welsh granite were ok though.
Always thought of ice as being more ‘technical’ too Mark, the sandstone that I found tough, was that on the cliffs at St Bees Head,300ft, if I remember rightly, eroded and rounded, never felt secure there, we used to collect gulls eggs, the local women used them for baking.
There’s some ice climbing here in the Auvergne (mostly N/NE facing gullies, and a few icefalls), but waiting for them to come into condition before they all collapse is the difficult one. Not done any of them though, most of my past ice adventures have been in Austria and Bavaria, and of course great alpine days out in the French and Italian Alps. Knackered knees kind of put a stop to those long expeditions. Still have the climbing gear though, and manage to haul my increasingly bad BMI up the fair selection of equipped granite outcrops in the Puy-de-Dome. Last time I went climbing in the UK was with my son, up at the Roaches, which was my home crag for my years at uni - he decided that UK trad style was definitely more of a trouser-filler than French clip-clip !
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Last time I went to St. Bees, I nearly drowned myself learning to surf-kayak…didn’t fancy the dodgy sandstone after that, had enough of it in my face !
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