More Tales from the Lakes

One lovely site I painted, during my week in the Lake District, was Watendlath. It is very quaint and picturesque: a tiny hamlet, with less than a handful of buildings, a river running under an old hump-backed bridge into a small lake and of course hills all round. I was most tempted by the view down the valley though:

Unfortunately, only a couple of minutes after setting myself up, my hair was alive with midges. They were biting my head and my ears and driving me potty. I gradually wrapped myself up more and more until they could only attack my nose:

I was just wondering how on earth I was going to survive the rest of the day, when it started to spit with rain. Oh no! At least that settled the midges down a bit anyway. The rain eased off long enough for me to do the watercolour above and begin the pastel below (I carried on with it from memory later that afternoon, in our caravan, but the foreground is still not quite finished), then it began drizzling again and eventually came back with a vengeance. 

As I discovered at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, pastels and rain do not mix! I retreated down the hill and managed to find limited shelter under a skinny tree, which allowed me one more quickie:

...but eventually, as you can see, the rain got through and I had to admit defeat. Luckily for me, one of the buildings in the hamlet turned out to be a cafe, serving excellent home-made flapjacks and hot coffee. Much deserved I reckon!