Why Cumbria is the ultimate place to have spent your childhood

Our childhood was pretty much exactly what you would expect from growing up in Cumbria – except probably a lot more stereotypical. Frequently, after telling people what we used to get up to they like to tell us it sounds like we were part of an Enid Blyton novel.

We grew up as next door neighbours, in a tiny village in the middle of Cumbria – situated at the foot of Thack Moor (the end of the Pennine mountain range). You could literally walk out of our front doors, straight up the fell. Although a couple of years ago after a re-measure of Thack Moor it was in fact pronounced a mountain by something like 1m (lol), so technically we lived at the foot of a mountain.

Here’s a play-by-play of pretty much our day to day life when we weren’t at school:

Playing in streams

This was a classic. Show us a stream and we’d get in it. Our village beck was top of the list. Once we actually thought it was cool to imagine that we were in a spa and cover ourselves in the mud, we returned home, covered head to toe and our Mothers let us know that most of that mud was in fact cow shit. We never did that again.

Us clearly loving the streams

 Walking, or fell-climbing, the occasional mountain (ya know)

Speaks for its self really. Our parents dragged us out whenever possible, even if it was kicking and screaming.

Flo and I last year

Camping

Either in the back garden (what can we say, we had good imaginations pretending we were survivors in the wild) or the annual summer camping trips to the lakes or Scotland. We are pretty bloody great at starting camp fires, so if you ever get stranded anywhere – we are your girls.

Swimming in lakes (probs whilst camping)

Although the British summers were never quite warm enough, whenever we made a trip to one of the many lakes in the Lake District it was compulsory to take a dip – whether you’d bought swimmers or not, although the latter is probably illegal now.

Rowing on the lakes

Sometimes the lakes had boats. If we hired the rowing boats, it usually involved our older siblings rowing us to a small island in the lake and rowing away, leaving us stranded for an hour or so until our parents came to the rescue.

The village ice cream van would cause an absolute riot

Every Tuesday and Friday at 8pm the Ice Cream van would sound it’s tune for the whole village to hear. The children promptly went bezerk, screaming at their parents for £1.50 so they could buy at least two screw balls (if you don’t know what they are then you should be ashamed).

We never wore shoes

They just weren’t necessary.

Bike rides to near by villages

We’d frequently cycle to neighbouring villages, sometimes with a picnic, where – as you probably guessed – we’d find a stream to set our rug down next to and eat, even swim if it was deep enough. This year we attempted to cycle to our old favourite village – it was a round trip of 12 miles with huge hills, it was hell.

We also used to play in the hay bales

Everyone who’s grown up in the country or near a farm knows how much fun you can have in a field with a pile of hay bails. Man, those were the days.

We used to feed orphan lambs from the bottle

Yup, this is a thing. We’ve both seen multiple farm animals give birth and every year we’d frequent the village farms to see if any poor lambs had been orphaned and if we could feed them every day with a baby bottle. One of us is a vegetarian and the other has not eaten lamb for about 12 years (they’re so bloody cute).

We are aware this is a donkey not a lamb

And go to Ceilidh’s (pronounced Kay-leigh)

While you may have been crashing your parent’s parties and stealing the alcohol, we were probably at a local barndance. Strip the willow is surprisingly fun.

We feel we should also mention, we did do the normal things too, especially as we grew older. Apparently smothering yourself in cow poo isn’t acceptable in your 20s – who knew?