Miles and miles, farms and farms

     Today was a vacation from a vacation, a needed respite from walking, and we spent it in Grasmere.  The town is something of a shrine to Wordsworth, ( the poet, you know) who lived here. Instead of paying homage to him, we visited the ATM, (the only one we'll see for a week)  and restocked our emergency survival supplies, (the best of which come in neat little bars from a company called Cadburys.) We had tea, and let me tell you, a good scone just makes you realize how bad most scones are.  And we are enjoying wifi, ( Hi, y'all!) something poor ol' Wordsworth never knew he didn't have. 

  

Farms

    We haven't had wifi either the last few days because we've been staying on farms in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, I'm surprised to learn that there is a middle of nowhere in England, but there is and it's right around here. And a lovely place it is too. 
       Another thing I've learned is that there are two kinds of farms.  The first one was down a long road through horse pastures.  The horses were huge with really big feet. They were friendly, though and came right out in the road to say hi.  We slept in the attic room of a very, old building and dried our boots by a coal fire.   Duck in the doorways so you don't whack your frontal lobe on the beam. It was comfortable, but out the back door there was farm equipment and gas tanks and bales of hay and mucky things. It was a farm. 

       The second farm was also very old and it was lovely.  Flowers were blooming in a wheel barrel by the door.  The landlady explained to me that they don't actually own the farm.  They rent it from The National Trust, a nonprofit whose mission includes the preservation of rural life, sustainable agriculture and native breeds of farm animals. Her husband maintains a flock of heritage Hardwick sheep, but the wool is not worth much these days. Thus they actually make their living from the B&B, and some cottages they rent to people who want to stay on a "farm".    

     What to make of this? The goals of the Trust are laudable, and her husband is out there on the fells tramping around in the rain with the sheep, but it all seems kind of make believe. It's a bit of a puzzle. 

 

Miles
      Tomorrow we are only walking  twelve miles.  Bear in mind however that  those are British miles.  When Americans travel,  we do exhausting mental arithmetic, converting Celsius to Fahrenheit  so we know what to wear, and currency calculations to know what we can afford, so it's comforting that the UK, like the US, is an obtuse, backward country that uses miles, not kilometers like the rest of the world.  Hah! So you think.
         At home we walk three miles an hour easy. But a British mile, full of rocks and bogs, can easily take a whole hour. Clearly, American miles and British miles are not equivalent.  The exact conversion formula has not been established, but believe me, those twelve British miles are going to take a hell of a lot longer than regular old US miles would.  They'll probably take all day.