We returned on Friday from a one-week reunion with university friends – some we see very often and some less so; we hadn’t all been together since February 2020. After a protracted winter selection process pitting locations and cottages against each other, the nine of us had managed to agree on a converted inn in Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria, and it ended up being the perfect base for us: roomy, with lots of communal space plus en suite rooms for each family unit, and well located.

This was my first time in the Lake District in 17 years, and I particularly enjoyed the outings to Haweswater, Acorn Bank, Keswick and Derwentwater, and Carlisle (that one by train), as well as some low-key walking closer to the cottage.

Cautley Spout waterfall. Photos by Chris Foster.

Rowing on Derwentwater.

As apposite reading, I took along:

• Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin: A memoir of chronic illness by a writer based in Grasmere.
• Haweswater by Sarah Hall: Purchased in Sedbergh last year. Hall’s debut novel is set in the run-up to the lake being dammed to provide water for the city of Manchester in 1936, flooding the village of Mardale. I’m finding it rather dry and the local accent over-the-top, but I’ll push through and call it one of my 20 Books of Summer.
• The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks: A recipe-studded memoir of daily life as the spouse of famous Lake District sheep farmer James Rebanks.
• Wild Fell by Lee Schofield: As featured in my Six Degrees post, a plant-loving and conservation-oriented memoir by the manager of the RSPB Haweswater site.

I also packed, but didn’t get time to read from, books by Margaret Forster and Dorothy Wordsworth. A good showing by women from the northwest!

Though we hadn’t planned on going back so soon, having been for the first time in September, when I learned that Sedbergh was only 40 minutes from where we were staying, I suggested it for a daytrip along with a scenic walk to a waterfall and cake and soft drinks at the Cross Keys Temperance Inn, and even the less book-obsessed of us seemed to enjoy.

My final haul – including, from Carlisle, one book each from a charity shop and Bookcase (above), which I learned about from Simon but actually found kind of overwhelmingly huge and mazelike – cost £9.50 after subtracting the sellback of a partial box of books at Westwood. A good selection of poetry and novellas, plus a favourite I couldn’t resist buying two copies of and might reread as a buddy read with my husband (the Orlean).

Any vacation reading or book hauls for you this August?