Skyberries and Voidmelons or Voidberries and Skymelons

On our way back to London, wintrmute and I visited a mausoleum, two churches and a castle, which had even more scaffolding than the last. Details of these have already begun to fade in my mind, but fragments that I do remember include strawberries for breakfast; the suggestion of sticking glow-in-the-dark stars to the mausoleum; being amused at the similarity of our toothbrushes; imagining the Swallows and Amazons still on one of the little islands on the lakes; the first night we spent in Arkham - a moonless night with a full array of stars.

At the edge of Derwent Water, she waits for children to have their photographs taken by their parents, with the lakes and the fells in the distance. The children smile momentarily and then disperse to climb across tree roots, trying to get down to the lake.

When she stops waiting and looks through her camera lens at the lake and the speckles of islands covered in trees, the scene doesn't look as beautiful as in the pictures she's seen. In the future, instead of remembering what she actually saw at the lake, she will choose to remember someone else's photos, when the sky was a richer blue and the water twinkled in the sunlight.

They walk up hills and over streams and past some lambs and only get a little bit lost before they reach Castlerigg Stone Circle. The stone circle is situated amongst breathtaking scenery and although the stones are a lot smaller than those at some stone circles, it is still impressive. It is very windy and cold and crowded there, and she wants to hug him tightly and hide behind a stone to keep warm, like many of the other people seem to be doing. Instead they walk in opposite directions around the circle trying to photograph stones that no legs or arms stick out from.

Back in Keswick, they drink coffee in a café that sells chocolate shots in chocolate cups and joke about going to the nearby pencil museum to see the world's largest colour pencil and then after that going to see everything that claims to be the "world's largest". Outside there is a congregation, singing loudly because it is Easter.

After that, they visit the Bowder Stone, which is a large boulder that appears to be peculiarly balanced. There are wooden steps up it, so they walk to the top of the rock and then back down it. There isn't much to see at the top of the rock, apart from more rock, since it weighs about 2000 tons and is about 30 feet high, 50 feet across and 90 feet in circumference. There are people trying to climb up the sides of the rock with ropes.

At sunset, they head to Penrith and wander around the castle as the sky turns pink and blue, before ending the day drinking sangria (not at a tea-room though, so not quite 'the finest wines available to humanity.')

The tree trunk lies still on the ground, leafless and branchless, but not bare. Tuppences and wishes glint in the sun, just slightly now, as the light begins to dim.

A girl who arrived in the Lake District just a few hours before, stands near to a guy clutching a tripod, and they both pause to look at the trunk studded with coins for a few moments.

She thinks the embedded coins look a little like scales and then she wonders about the fallen tree, what it would wish for, if it could wish.

They walk further into the woods and there are more unusual trees to stare at, some striped and mossy and some looking as if they were struck by lightning. When they reach the waterfall, they find it roars in places and trickles in others, and they step from rock to rock to get closer to the pools of water. Later, when they look at the photos they took, the waterfall itself seems to be perhaps a bit forgettable, but there is a slight dreaminess about the streams that flow past the moss-covered stones and the tangles of tree roots.
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Nothing stirs in Arkham when they get out of the car they had been zooming down motorways in earlier, listening to CDs they'd forget to change, so the songs would repeat over and over again; listening to the voice named Ken or sometimes Tim, that gave them directions every now and then; listening to the beeping noise warning of speed cameras, that she'd hear rattling around in her head for days after that.

But Arkham, Arkham is quiet at the moment, as they try to find the 17th century cottage they are going to stay in. After the motorways and after being in London just a few hours before, the village green with stone cottages around it, two pubs and a post-office all seems far too still. There is no answer at the cottage when they knock on the door. There is no answer to the phone that they can hear ringing inside.

They stand by the green and wait, and maybe she's just tired, but Arkham doesn't seem like a real place, even after Londa arrives and leads them in to the B&B with hunting scenes depicted on the bedroom walls.

They leave again soon, to find Ullswater, and watch the silhouettes of boats drift across the lake.