First siting of the “mere.”

Pastoral scene as we were pedaling…horses

On Thursday we needed to return the bikes so we re-traced our route to Windermere (the town) and continued on a mile to Bowness-on-Windermere, home of Lake Windermere ferries.  “Lake Windermere” is actually redundant and historically incorrect since “mere” means “water”, but when a town near the mere took on the name “Windermere”, something had to be done to stop the confusion.  Windermere (the lake) is the largest lake in England and a popular spot for water sports, though at 1/10 the size of Lake Lanier and a summer water temperature around 60 F, most Georgians will not be impressed.

Pastoral scene….sheep

Pastoral scene….wildflowers

We had an idea to take a ferry across the lake and pedal up to Wray Castle, but the ferry ranevery hour and our timing was such that we weren’t going to make it back to Windermere (the town) by 5 PM to return our bikes.  So we opted to watch people, dogs and boats for an hour before returning to Cycle Hire and taking a taxi back to Kendal.

Pedaling through Bowness-on-Windermere: note 2′ wide “cycle path”, common where we biked–it works well enough, especially if cars limit speed to 25 mph.

Brits on holiday fill the ferry docks…

…and ferry boats that cruise the lake

Sailboats and “self-drive” motorboats enjoy Windermere.