Touring Ambleside

From the B&B we made our way around the tip of Coniston lake and over to Ambleside situated at the top of Lake Windermere. We had briefly driven through Ambleside o our way to Hill Top and we know took the opportunity to have a wander through the town. It was here that we discovered a very quaint but practical manner of dealing with parking. Most towns and sights have pay an display parking systems but within the towns there is a system for short term parking on the streets whereby a motorist simply ducks into one of the shops along the street and collects a small cardboard dial representing a clock and sets the dial to the time arrived. Along the streets the spots are labeled with the time limit alerting motorists to how long they have. We enjoyed using this system throughout the district as parking times ranged from 30 minutes to 2 hours usually a perfect amount of time to see what we wanted and then move on. Ambleside is a tourist town with lots of shops and restaurants. One notable feature is the old Bridge house, a tiny edifice straddling the stream which runs through the town and which, thanks to the rain was gushing. We picked up a few postcards and sampled some of the infamous Kendal mint cake, a confection mostly sugar and mint created to help sustain hikers as the transversed the Fells.