You could be forgiven for thinking I had gone to the Lake District and not visited any lakes, but of course I did.

En route to Cockermouth we passed Bassenthwaite Lake which is large but flat looking if you know what I mean.

We passed Thirlmere, a pretty enough lake but nothing spectacular, in order to visit Grasmere, lake and village, where we sampled the “famous Grasmere gingerbread.”

We also climbed up to Allan Bank, a house which William Wordsworth once rented.

From the left hand side of the house as seen above I took three photos of the lake and village, stitched into the one below.

The lake itself is little more than a puddle but the village is a delightful wee place.

Then onwards, up and over from the A591 to the A592 a very steep ascent giving me the opportunity to photograph Lake Windermere. Again a stitch (of two this time.)

We then kept on up the A592 travelling almost the full length of Ullswater – which is impressive, if not quite as magnificent as most Scottish fresh-water lochs. Particularly appealing were the tourist pleasure boats plying the lake, reminding me of the Loch Lomond of my youth and a trip to Loch Katrine about 12 years ago. It was raining by that time though and we didn’t stop. Perhaps next time.

From Whitehaven we moved on to the town of Egremont where there was no Art Deco but it does have a very dignified War Memorial. Its statue of a soldier dominates one end of the main street. Pity about the street light behind it.

The Great War names are set round the upper portion. WW2 names are on plaques either side.

The WW2 plaque on the opposite side unusually contains the name of a woman – who I thought may perhaps have been a nurse but it seems Grace Cummings was a Wren, (WRNS.)

Whitehaven appeared a bit more prosperous than Maryport or Workington, less industrial certainly, and with a lot of sailing yachts in the harbour.

But more Art Deco, not just the Bus Station.

Only separated from the old Bus Station by one building is this pub, the Bransty Arch, now a Wetherspoons.

Here’s the frontage in more detail. Good stuff on the roofline and the Arch motif.

Here’s the side view looking back towards the old Bus Station.

Further into the town I found a Burton’s.

This is typical of 30s Burton’s style. Pity about the wires and other guff in the way in this other view in which I also seem inadvertently to have photographed a gull on the roof!

We found a large second-hand book shop in the town, very nook and cranny-like. Sadly none of the books grabbed my interest sufficiently to buy any. Ones I might have bought I already had! The good lady managed one purchase, though, and also browsed one she had been thinking of buying from the internet but decided she wouldn’t like it.

After Harrington and the surprise of Heathfield another surprise awaited us further down the coast in Whitehaven; a fantastic Art Deco Bus Station, sadly no longer in use. To show the full extent this is a stitch of two photos.

As you can see I took the above from Tesco’s car park!

Here’s a closer view of the entrance to the ex-Bus Station.

The photo below shows the curve of the entrance.

The entrance is not only fenced off in the lower part but netted above.

This is the first of the two photos I stitched:-

And this is the second:-

>

In do hope someone can find a use for this brilliant building – or at least put something behind the facade.

On the way south out of Workington we passed through Harrington (a suburb?) and the good lady spotted the house pictured below. Luckily there was an easy place to park for me to nip out and photograph it.

Heathfield has all the Art Deco hallmarks; flat roof, rounded wall edges, white rendering. Note the long window and the stepped frontage. All the eyes are poked out, though.

The above is the first view I took. The least interesting.

This last photo shows the rounded canopy over the entrance door.

Apart from the modernised glazing this house seems to have been maintained very much in keeping with its origins. It’s still imposing.

From Maryport we headed down the coast to Workington. The approach to the town is through an industrial landscape but we did pass Borough Park, the tidy, if old-fashioned, home ground of Workington AFC. Once a proud Football League side, they now ply their trade in the Conference (Blue Square Bet) North. In their league days weren’t they known as Workington Town? There’s no mention of that on Wiki nor their home page.

We passed the building below on our way to finding a parking spot. It’s the County Library. I made sure to photo it on our walkabout. A fine building – even if its eyes have been poked out.

Also impressive was the Bus Station. Not Deco but looks like a former cinema from a distance. This seemed to be the exit. The entrance looked very similar but was at an angle to this one.

Just over the road from it (you can see a bus exiting the Bus Station on the left of the photo – and a preceding one on the right) was this.

Not far down the same street was this row of Deco shops. I didn’t bother strolling down to get a closer shot of the white ones. We were a bit pushed for time.

Like Maryport Workington was a bit own at heel especially away from the immediate environs of the main shopping area.

I liked this building though, now converted to a Wetherspoon’s.

Henry Bessemer, if you were wondering, invented a process to produce steel from iron.

This was just over the side street from the Henry Bessemer.

Not a bad haul of Art Deco from one of the towns in England most out on a limb. Sadly, without exception, the buildings had all been reglazed unsympathetically. (Eyes poked out.)

Maryport is a lovely name for a town and it’s where the River Ellen debouches into the Irish Sea.

There’s always something aesthetically pleasing about a place where waters meet. The river in Maryport is nice enough as it curves under a bridge and into the sea but it isn’t exceptional. It helped too that the tide was in and there was as a result no unsightly muddy banks when I saw it.

The town itself has seen better times I would say and looked pretty down at heel even if the Christmas Lights were still suspended over Senhouse Street.

It did have some Art Deco, though. I spotted this on Crosby Street on the way back up from the river. The metal surrounds of the glass on the upper parts of the shop windows here are particularly striking. The higher up windows have been “poked out” though.

On Senshouse Street itself is what used to be a Woolworths and is now an Original Factory Shop. Nice roofline but again poked out eyes for the upper windows.

Cockermouth’s most famous son is the poet William Wordsworth.

There is a huge statue of a Lord Mayo on Main Street, though. From the inscription it sounds like Mayo was a bit of an imperial adventurer. He became Viceroy of India and was assassinated in the Andaman Islands!

Anyway, below is Wordsworth’s boyhood home on the junction of Main Street (right) and Crown Street (left.)

Quite imposing. And difficult to photograph without a car in the shot!

We viewed the house and garden – both overseen by the National Trust. We got there just as it was opening at eleven a.m. and there was a queue. Apparently at the height of the tourist season it’s mobbed.

Here’s a view of the garden from the house. It’s a bit sparse looking after the coldest early spring in Britain for 50 years. The River Derwent is a footpath or so beyond the wall at the back. It was from the terrace there I photographed the bridge over the Derwent I featured a couple of posts ago.

There is a small bust of Wordsworth on a pedestal on Gallowbarro – the bar of the “T” to Main Street and Crown Street.

Just to the right of where I took the above photo is a memorial fountain to both William and his sister Dorothy. This was taken at more or less a right angle to where I photographed their childhood home.

I hadn’t really expected to see any Art Deco in Cockermouth. There was however this lampshade in the entrance corridor to an antique centre.

On Main Street there was this shop front which must have been added on in the 30s, with its typical banded windows at the top and angled entrance.

And on Lorton Street we have a stepped roof line.

Some of the buildings had flood level signs for the flood of November 2009. The water reached diffeent heights on the buildings depending how far along Main Street they were.

Edited to add:- The chicken and black pudding stack we both ate at the Kingfisher on Crown Street was delicious – especially the garnish of mustard sauce. The only possible criticism could be the chicken was perhaps a touch too browned on the outside but for me that didn’t detract from it at all.

On our trip last week we were based in Cockermouth, at the edge of the Lake District in Cumbria. It has an elegant bridge over the River Derwent.

Not to mention this rather Grand Theatre on Station Road. The lower windows prefigure Art Deco but the building as a whole looks older.

And of course there’s a War Memorial, which is further up Station Road from the town. (I’m not too keen on these ones with an angel on top.)

The names of the fallen are on the reverse side (which it is difficult to photograph while at the same time avoiding getting the petrol station in th eframe.)