Our two nights in Cumbria, England's Lake District.
We were privileged to be able to stay for two night at this medieval manor house located in Cumbria, known as the Lake District. Our friends Bethan and Nicholas own the house.
Nicholas was our second line supervisor when we worked in England. We actually stayed in this house which is normally used by guests and the caretaker.

Two floors were nicely furnished and Elaine had ample

room to keep up with her email and web page updates.

Bethan is an avid gardener, and we had tours or her

spectacular arrays of many different kinds of flowers.

Is this the perfect rose or what?

More pictures of their lavish gardens.

Elaine, a flower in the midst of  flowers.
Bethan said this is a rare sight in Cumbria this summer -- cows.
Much can be learned by looking at inscriptions above doors. The one at the left has the date 1637, the apparent date of the construction of that part of the building. Below and right, the date 1747 dates the main part of the manor house.
Of course, much more can be learned simply by asking Nicholas, seen leaving his wonderful abode.
We were just leaving to drive the 30-or-so miles to Carlisle, which is on the border between England and Scotland. This is the magnificent Carlisle Cathedral.
 
This wide angle shot of the interior shows the famous off-center organ, which is actually in the back of the worship area. This noon, the seats were all turned around.
The Carlisle International festival was in session all this week, and we decided to hear Gordon Stewart, an internationally known organist from Scotland, give a noontime lecture and concert. His lecture was really great. He described how the pipe organ works, and handed out organ pipes all around the audience for everyone to toot them. His concert was wonderful!!!!
It's hard to get a decent picture of the organ showing it's intricate design, but this will have to do.
I was not allowed to desecrate the sanctuary with my bean bag on the grand piano to get the interior picture, but the artists for that evening later tromped all around the space.
Driving back from Carlisle, we were astonished at the long grass and no sheep. The foot and mouth has been deadly.
Every now and then, a farm was seen with cattle. Nicholas said only a few farms were free of the devastation.

We had a grand tour of the interior of the house.
This is the great hall, the largest room in the house.
This is the drawing room. See the two dogs, Whiskey and Bonnie.
Another picture of the drawing room with all it's art work.

When we stayed here in 1993, we climbed up to our living quarters in this stairway, which I think dates back to the twelve hundreds. This brought us up to this little kitchen.

This is the ceiling of that stairwell.
Actually, they use all the rooms we stayed in. Roger and Shirley, do you recognize our rooms? They're decorated a bit more lavishly now. Above is the bathroom.
And next to it was this breakfast nook. Nicholas and Bethan are now living here and use these two rooms for breakfast.
The new guest room. This was our sitting room in 1993.
This and the one below are the current master bedroom.

All of these rooms are connected by a hallway, at least it was such in 1993. Now, they have installed all this  shelving and have made it into this splendid library.
This is called a nursery -- we saw no child in the house.
And these two pictures are of the "other" bedroom. 
Henry, their son, stays in one of these rooms when he is home from Oxford, probably the new guest room.
One of our fondest memories was our week's stay in Worcester in which Nicholas participated in the Three Choir's Festival with their fantastic presentation of Britton's War Requiem. Our next stop in this trip is a night in Worcester and a review of all the memories that had for us. Join us in the next thirteen pictures in Worcester.

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