DAY 40: TEN LAKES!

When we were young, "tour" was a dirty word.  It conjured images of luxury buses crammed full of elderly retirees wearing matching windbreakers.  "Tour" took its place on our personal wall of shame, alongside "cruises" and wine tasting," and then, as we aged, one by one those taboos, these scarlet "Things Other People Do" became more palatable.

Wine tasting was the first to go.  It's actually kind of a nice way to spend an afternoon.  Please don't get in a time machine and go back to 1988 to tell the 23-year-old me I said that.  If you do, he'll certainly wrestle control of that time machine from you, come to the present and shoot me.  Or at least make fun of me in a very cutting and personal way.

Tours came next, that wall cascading down in 2013 with little resistance.  Two weeks into our first sabbatical, already tired, confused and on edge, we booked a tour of the Duomo in Florence to free ourselves from responsibility.  

It was great, the second battlefield conversion of my life. (The first happened on August 3, 1997, at the Swedish Medical Center birthing wing.)  Since then, whenever we travel internationally which, I will be the first to admit, happens way more often than I'd ever imagined it would, we book a few tours.  We go to viator.com, which is this website aggregator thing, and find something -- a day tour, the dreaded and misleading "skip the line" tour (which should be called "skip A line," not "skip THE line."  There are always more lines.), the ambitious and oh, so easy all-day tour (like the one we just got back from) and the king of all tours, the multi-day tour with George.  Just kidding.  They're not all with George.  Ours was.

The multi-day tour with George was an anomaly.  We'd never done it before this trip and we're still sorting out all of the extra tour considerations it introduced (Do you buy lunch for your guide?  Do you go out for beers with him at night?  Are you supposed to stay in the same hotel?).

Beautiful vistas: promised, and delivered.

In all we booked seven tours for this trip.  As of today, after completing the "10 Lakes Spectacular!" we have completed six.  That's a lot of tours.  Maybe too much.  We were getting pretty tour-heavy there for a couple of weeks, so we backed off.  Today's was the first one since the semi-tour we did with Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace, where our driver Michael impersonated the legendary Scottish formula one driver Jackie Stewart on the Ring of Kerry, pausing occasionally to answer our questions about the blurry scenery outside our windows.  We have one left and it's the grandaddy of all tours: Stonehenge.  

Today's tour was billed as a comprehensive tour of the Lake District, the incredibly lush and green home of Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and ancient mariner Christian Fletcher (from the same tiny village as Wordsworth) and favorite holiday destination for English families with dogs.  (further evidence suggests that Keswick may not be England's most dog-friendly holiday location, but instead part of a district-wide policy of welcoming dogs everywhere, including onto ferry boats)  The Mountain Goat Tours website promised beautiful vistas, visits to charming villages, a ferry boat ride and finally, a visit to the peaceful and mysterious Castle Rigg stone circle, one of 60 (?  I may be making this number up) stone circles in the Lake District.  

Peter lays it down. 

Our guide was Peter, he of the ramrod straight posture, the aversion to political commentary even while making political commentary and the complete dedication to his wife, who he described to us periodically as "the love of (his) life" and "the prettiest girl in the world."  I give Peter a solid B+, which puts him well above Michael but of course below George, who is the gold standard for U.K. guides.  He got us home 10 minutes ahead of schedule, which allowed us time to get a beer before coming back to the room and peel off our wet socks (our second pair of the day, purchased at one of the outdoor stores in Wordsworth's hometown of Grasmere after poor choices -- like putting on our waterproof Keens in them morning and saying, "Hmm... these are still a little damp.  I think I'll wear my regular tennis shoes" even though it's going to be pouring for the first half of the tour).

Rain was our companion for most of today.  Barbara and George Ford were not.  They didn't show up until lunch, which I normally would say is odd for an all-day tour but today's was riddled with attrition.  There was the girl traveling solo in the front seat, who came in hot, chatting up Peter as if they were old friends, only to suddenly jump ship at 4 PM, disappearing into a rural B & B without explanation.  "She has to catch a train," Sandra Bullock, whose eavesdropping skills are usually pretty shoddy, confided.

"In the middle of nowhere?"  Shoulder shrug.

The women sitting in front of us didn't disappear but they may as well have.  For much of the second half of the tour they simply stayed on the bus, choosing to sit there and play Pokemon Go instead of joining the rest of us in our futile efforts at capturing the staggering natural beauty of the Lake District.  

Mark Weir's dream ended here. 

We made several stops, beginning at the Bridge of Ashness, England's second-most photographed bridge, which is where it started raining.  Hard.  Enough to destroy my tennis shoes, permanently clammy feet being my punishment for short-sightedness.  The rain continued as we visited Honister, England's last slate mine, where you can buy really heavy coasters and climb a miniature Half Dome, even if it's pouring, and hear the sad story of mine owner Mark Weir, who perished while flying his beloved helicopter.  "I am sad to say that Mark Weir is no more," Peter said with an understatedness that would continue right up until he told us that he likes to have barbecues with his friends at the stone circle except during the summer, when "you get an awful lot of hippie people who just come along and be daft."

By now I was obsessed with the fact that the guy sitting behind us sounded exactly like J.K. Simmons.  It was uncanny.  He looked nothing like J.K., never made the bemused, disgusted J.K. Simmons face that my son and I so love making to each other, but he did sound exactly. Like. J.K. Simmons.  I couldn't stop listening, waiting for him to make a convincing argument for switching to Farmer's Insurance, which never happened. 

Sandra Bullock, at work with the iPhone.

By lunchtime, which we spent in Wordsworth's hometown of Grasmere, I was beginning to feel guilty about not knowing anything about Wordsworth.  I tried to feign interest in his grave but was more focused on getting new socks before my feet developed jungle rot.  From there it was on to a very relaxing and scenic ferry ride on Windermere...water?  Lake?  Yesterday I called a body of water "Derwentwater Lake," but it might be called "Derment Water."  Peter gave us a long monologue about the various titles for bodies of water in the Lake District.  Only one, he told us, was actually a "lake," which seems odd, since the entire place is the "lake" district.  I don't want to be inaccurate, but I'm also too lazy to actually Google it.  Also, I'm down to 14 percent power on my laptop.  I encourage all readers to research this pressing and important issue.

After the lake, the scenery came hot and heavy.  We tore through a few prominent lake towns and congratulated ourselves for staying in Keswick and avoiding the hordes of tourists who'd set up camp in these more popular villages.  Later Sandra Bullock made Peter stop the bus so she could jump out and take a picture of a black Herdwicke sheep (don't worry; they change back to white by the time they're adults.  No mention of the trauma of having every single Herdwicke sheep go through its childhood as a literal black sheep).  "Watch," I told the rapt busload as they watched my unsinkable wife sprint across the street.  "She'll hop the fence to get closer."

She did not, to all of our great disappointment. 

At 4:15, after the mysterious front seat woman debused, it stopped raining.  We were all standing on the shores of the beautiful Ullswater when it happened.  J.K. Simmons and his wife and other friend celebrated by smoking their seventh butt of the day.  The Malaysian family took selfies.  Sandra Bullock climbed too close to the lake to get the perfect picture.  Graham Spencer, traveling along and unfortunately bearing the same name as Peter's best friend from childhood that he hasn't seen in 50 years, continued to say nothing.  

Accomplishing the impossible: a photo of the stone
circle sans selfie-taking tourists.

Finally, after a brief but hectic attempt by every single person in the bus, including Peter, to take a picture of a rainbow that suddenly appeared while we were driving, we reached the stone circle.  I was excited, expecting a transcendently peaceful experience like I'd had at the much smaller stone circle in Kenmare.  As we looked for parking, Peter raised questions:  "We don't know who put this here, or what it was for?  When you get out there, I want you to just stand there and imagine, and wonder who did this, and why?"  Let me at 'em, Pete.  I'm game.

Unfortunately, by the time we reached the circle so had dozens of other people, not exactly acting daft, more like acting like people act at mysterious tourist sites:  climbing on the rocks, taking selfies, talking loudly.  One guy had perfected the art of getting in everyone's photos, so I finally just took a picture of him.  

Congratulations, pal; you're finally the actual
subject of someone's photo.

I stood in the center of the circle, eyes closed, looking for peace.  None to be found.  Maybe, though, the peace was in the surrounding mountains, the valley in the distance so beautiful that even Sandra Bullock, whose faith in her iPhone camera is usually unquestioned, admitted, "There's no way a picture's going to capture this."

So we stood for awhile, backs turned to the jokers at the stone circle, and then finally went back to the bus.  Peter drove us the rest of the way into Keswick, cracking jokes about Americans that, while gentle, reminded us that to the English, we'll always be those loud-mouthed upstarts who just don't get how things work.

Here are today's tour numbers:  

2 -- number of climate control settings in Peter's Mercedes bus: stifling and icicle.

4 -- mountain passes traversed during today's tour.  Two were so subtle that "you won't even know it's a pass."

7 -- cigarette breaks for J.K. Simmons and his crew in 8.5 hours.

17 -- times on a mountain road Peter had to bring the bus to a complete stop to allow oncoming traffic to inch past.   

3 -- comments made by Peter questioning the competence of drivers of cars in oncoming traffic.

1 -- person speculating loudly that Leonard Nimoy would probably think the Castle Rigg stone circle is  the work of aliens.  That person: me.

Back on the road tomorrow, this time with no guide.  Just me, Sandra Bullock and our Volvo, covering the 237 miles between Keswick and Chipping-Campden, in the heart of the Cotswalds.  I hope they have cheese.