Like much of the country, I presume, our New Year got off to a rather slack start. Thankfully the kids seemed to have inhereted some of the inertia, perhaps from osmosis as they were in bed on time, and rose late. In the case of Elliott he was happy to stay in bed with daddy until gone nine.

We looked about for what was open and found little so at lunch time we all piled in the car and decided to just head in a direction in the hope of finding something more than the house and tired children – the lax morning had not improved their humour – to occupy us.

I drove towards the Lake District, thinking at first that I might stop at the nearby Wildlife Oasis, but by the time we reached Carnforth Ben was already asleep, so I continued on. The drive to the Lakes is a nice one and the motion of the car meant the kids would sleep.

We finally got to just past Ambleside when Ben awoke and I decided to stop at Grasmere. This is a town I have passed many times and never stopped at. We will return. It is a lovely village, we had a late lunch in a tea shop that was well priced and did good portions of tasty food. We also found a couple of places that had varied gluten free menus.

It was such a shame we got there in the afternoon as even in the light rain a walk around the area would have been nice. Anyway, for another time, on to the pictures.