One day in Kendal | September 19

During August, I spotted that Northern Rail were doing a 10p ticket sale. Sadly I didn't wake up in time to nab the best deals, but I did get my return ticket to Kendal for 20p, and then paid 10p for my friend's outward journey and £7.30 for his homeward journey. So for a whole £7.60, we got two return tickets to Kendal. Not bad, right? So here's what we got up to on our day out...

Our train was at half 11 from Lime Street, and we had to swap at Preston Lancs. Everything was going well until we got stuck at Wigan - meaning we'd probably miss our connecting train and have to come straight back to Liverpool as the app was saying there wasn't another train to Kendal until 3 hours later. When we eventually rolled in to Preston Lancs with 1 minute to spare, we dived off the train and went flying up and down two flights of stairs only to have missed it.

After getting our breath back and snapping some photos of a gorgeous steam train, we tried to decide what to do. While we were pondering, we saw another train that was going via Kendal - it was about to leave so we just jumped on it without giving it too much thought. Even though it wasn't our train, the staff were fine with us being on it as the delay was (clearly) not our fault. We finally arrived in Kendal a while later, and the weather was cloudy but dry.

Kendal is such a picturesque place, which is lucky really as everything is closed on a Monday. Not everything but certainly the museums, and a few of the pubs. We headed from the train station into town over a bridge, and after a little wander round soaking in the atmosphere we found a lovely little pub called the George & Dragon. £4.90 for a dark fruits and a cask ale? Smashing. We sat in the beer garden for a while and then decided to head up to Kendal Castle.

It only takes around 15 minutes to walk to the castle ruins from the town centre - just walk along the river and up quite a steep road lined with gorgeous houses that you'll immediately want to buy, and then up a bit of a grassy hill. And there you have it. There's information and maps and absolutely stunning views, so we sat up there for a while just chatting and eating crisps in the sunshine. Bliss!

We headed back down into town, and explored a bit further. By this time it was already around 4.30pm and we popped into Ye Olde Fleece Inn, the oldest pub in Kendal. It's absolutely beautiful, decorated so beautifully with really modern twists, but the prices are shocking. We headed back out after a pint each, in search of Kendal mint cake. Alas, we didn't find any - the shops were shut. I'm still kicking myself for not buying any earlier in the day, because I've never tried it before.

With an hour to go until we had to get the train home, we headed back to the George & Dragon where the bar staff were made up to see us again. More pints, more chilling in the beer garden - and then the rain started and we made our way back to the tiny train station to wait for our (slightly delayed) train.

👉🏼 HOTELS IN KENDAL 👈🏼

It was a whirlwind of a day - a quick visit to a quaint little town. If the museums had been open I would have liked to explore them but as it was, we had a lovely day out anyway!

Have you been to Kendal before? Leave your recommendations below...

For the lowdown on my trip to Nottingham, CLICK HERE