Beleaguered in Barrow

A clifftop track took me the last two miles  into Barrow, with great views all around.  The wind was now strong and cold - Scottish wind.

Barrow's a big place - the biggest since Glasgow, and it has a city feel to it.  It's where they build the you-know-whats: say no more, but there is a huge shed alongside the waterfront.

I arrived and my first thought was tea, followed by where to stay.  The latter proved tricky.  There are no campsites for miles around so I planned to get a B&B, of which there were many.  When I looked in January.

Now, they were rarer and dearer. I found one on Booking.com, an app I haven't used before.  Booking went through ok and I got a confirmation email with a PIN number.  When I arrived at the address, there was a keypad lock on the front door. My PIN didn't work, and there was nobody answering the door. Or the phone number. Or the emergency phone number.  After leaving messages and getting very cold waiting, I retired to Morrisons café for a re-think.

In the end I gave up and booked somewhere else, the Majestic Hotel, with real people answering the phone.  Google doesn't make it easy to do things that way.

As a consequence, I didn't do the planned 15 mile tour of Walney Island.  Sorry about that.  Maybe I'll come back another time and do it. But probably not.

Actually, there is one attractive looking campsite, on Piel Island, but the ferry only runs between 11:30-5:30, and the pub stops serving food at 6pm.