catching up on cumbria

though i did bring my laptop with me to ambleside (the town pictured left), i couldn't sleuth out the wireless access with which i am customarily pampered, so the promised updates were not possible, alas. but i've sorted through all of my media now and am ready to report and share. what went undocumented in photos or film were the many errant interactions with other travelers and residents, all of whom were so kind and generous to me and eager to be temporary companions.
highlights in the cast are:
eleanor: a college student from yale, with whom i was briefly assigned to share a room. she was camped out in this hostel for a month total and had let her things mildew so intensely that the stench in the room was unbearable and maybe even permanent. i was moved, happily, and i think they even stopped putting others in with her entirely after that - can't be good for business.
martin & james: the ambleside backpackers hostel managers, who took to my company and both treated me royally, printing me out maps and directions for walks so i didn't have to buy them, letting me use their own washer/dryer for free, giving me chocolates, asking me to smile, giving me a lift to my second hostel, telling me all about the hostel drama, etc...by the end of three nights i was quite at home there.
shirley: a middle-aged manchesterite who, in a testament to the region's lasting romance, has a five-year-long tradition of spending one weekend per month in ambleside and at this hostel specifically to go out fell-walking; she had a perfect northern accent and talked up a storm.
dee & celeste: two americans who adopted me in my second hostel, taking me out to a very nice dinner in a middle-of-nowhere pub called the mortal man. dee is a history professor at one of the california public universities, over in the uk researching some early abolitionist brit who was friends with the wordsworths, and celeste, her niece, is a rising senior in a new jersey high school who is obsessed with the beatles and talked constantly of herself and her self-seriousness (daughter of two education lawyers, wanted endlessly to discuss college applications). they were so chatty and self-important and truly terrible listeners - just waiting for their turn to speak, as some do - and though kind to me reminded me well how i feel that americans can be well-meaning but still very unpleasant, even while i do share some of these fibers. most of all they were fascinatingly without curiosity about exploring the land of the lake district.
charlie pitts: a mostly deaf and certainly ancient patron of the mortal man who thought i said my name was sheila and told me how boring the picturesque becomes when you are stuck in the middle of it all your life. when i told him i'd been invited out to dinner there by these two others sharing my hostel room who i'd otherwise never met, he said 'aye, that's the way the world should be.' he kissed my hand and told me to remember him and come back to visit.
the mountain goat shuttle driver: a kindly man who took me personally out to see a distant country house from the arts & crafts movement in britain called blackwell, and returned to retrieve me for free; his other part-time job was a door-to-door mobile librarian to the elderly and families living in the rural lake district, which was such a wonderfully old-fashioned notion to me - 3,000 books a month out on loan.

not even beginning to mention the bustling towns , as completely overrun with summertime's tourism, which i avoided most of the time and certainly tried not to document, this is all in addition to the million and twelve sheep/cows/birds/slugs and the dozens of other walkers with whom i shared variously toned but requisite "hello"s. though most of my time in the hills was very private and remote, and extended solitude is certainly interesting in its effects - well, you see for yourself, via postings of a plethora of pictures and this small video effort: