Blue T-shirt in Duddon Valley, Lake district

According to Wikipedia: "The Duddon Valley is a valley in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. The River Duddon flows through the valley, rising in the mountains between Eskdale and Langdale, before flowing into the Irish Sea near Broughton in Furness." Also according to Wikipedia, the valley is frequently called Dunnerdale, but the walker and illustrator Alfred Wainwright preferred the name Duddon Valley. 

I have stayed twice (at least) at the Turner Hall Farm/Campsite. It is a friendly and quiet campsite at walking distance from the Newfield Inn and nearby interesting rocky outcrops. The climbing site in the photo is Birk's Bridge Crag and can be found in the middle of a verdant Forestry Commission woodland, which looked ancient. To reach it, we crossed the famous 18th century stone bridge, Birks Bridge. The climb was easy but still challenging for someone with quite a few "additional" kilos. This area is very picturesque and far from the Lakes summer crowds, so it is very tranquil. The only annoying thing is that the closest pub, as most pubs in England and Scotland, stop serving food very early. In the summer, when it does not get dark until late (~11pm), it does not make sense for pubs to close the kitchen at 8pm (at least for a Portuguese, and I would think for a Spanish too) - they would not survive in Portugal or Spain. The only advantage is that we save lots of money by having to cook the meals in the tent. Maybe if they knew what was about to come (COVID-19) they would have made an effort!

Blue European Flag

I never wrote about Brexit before because it hurts. I know exactly where I was when the Brexit vote won in June 2016. I was in Manaus, Brazil, which is currently one of the most affected places by COVID-19. A group of us came into my hotel room to watch the results late at night. We were mostly non-British working in the UK. It came like a cold-water bucket and the day after it felt as a boyfriend had left me. I am convinced that big problems such as climate change or tax evasion are solved together not alone. But many people thought that single countries can solve their own problems and that there are no shared or entwined problems. I have had the opportunity to get to know England much better and to realise that there are many people left down by Westminster Government, especially in the North East of England. If the European Union started to be more about people's well being than about the common market, maybe those deprived areas did not exist and a Brexit vote would not have happened. But it did. Last year, in March, a big demonstration anti-Brexit happened in London after months of failed attempts to draw an exit deal. However, many of the people attending were foreigners, are used to travel abroad all the time, are professional, are bourgeois...People from those deprived areas in the North East of England were not there. The European Union should be a Union to safeguard and promote good environmental condition, education for all, well-being, decent work conditions, free health services. If these were the true goals the UK would not be heading for the abyss and the unknown.