Joel is seen here paddling at St Bees beach. Just a few miles north of Sellafield/Winscale, the double-headed fish are surprisingly rare. This is a beautiful part of the lakes, and the only reason we won’t be going there every weekend for ever is that it’s pretty inaccessible from the rest of the lakes and the rest of the country. Our previous MP, Colin,  retired to Ulverston, and I can see why. The surrounding countryside is wonderful.

We stayed at a campsite which had been recommended by one of our clients – totally not a bum steer, it was fab. The washing facilities were adequate & clean, the field was… a field, dotted with wheel rims to be used as fire pits. The fire pit made the weekend for me.

You can see the best of the other photos in our flickr set: Eskdale

At the campsite was a playground with a zip slide, and several climbing bits which were 1″ to 2″ too big for Joel. The real piece de resistance from the kids’ point of view, though, was the pond. About 20ft across, and 18″ deep, it was full of kids pretty much all weekend. There’s a small rock island in the middle, 2 tractor tyres fashioned into rafts and 2 rope swings for swift entry for the brave. Lily entered this way once, unintentionally. She didn’t do it twice…

We sat by the fire watching the stars on the first night, I saw about 6 satellites (no visible moon, which helped) and the milky way was as clear as I’ve ever seen it. Beautiful.

Our neighbours had 2 beautiful Weimaraners. Turns out these ones could be quite barky around sunset. But they *looked* gorgeous.

There was a little railway which went along one side of the site, and carried on along out to the coast. We didn’t go on it this time, but will have to next time we go, I think.

We were slightly disappointed that Sellafield Visitors Centre isn’t open at weekends at the moment as they’re rebuilding/refurbishing it, but we managed to persuade Joel not to take it personally. It seems power stations are not to be the outing of choice this summer! Instead, we went to the beach, as you can see from most of the pictures, and it was a big hit.