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South Wales Argus
15-06-2025
- South Wales Argus
Fear, beer, love and loathing in the Lake District
Cumbria's crown jewel is arguably the definitive place to escape the foibles of everyday life. A seemingly limitless landscape that promises possibility, adventure and, above all else, escapism. Well, at least in England anyway. In 2020, two friends and I cycled from Snowdon to Scafell Pike and then to Ben Nevis for charity (beepity, beep, beep). Owing to its storied past, I was arguably looking forward to the Lake District section of the journey the most. The majestic home of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ruskin, Potter, and even Pallet. I was practically drunk at the thought of passing through an area that fosters such a deep connection to nature. Penrith (Image: Newsquest) We passed through Cockermouth, Keswick, Kendal, Whitehaven, Maryport, and Carlisle, among other places, tackling fatigue, bickering, COVID restrictions, and, above all else, the elements. On an average day, Hardknott Pass is described as 'England's steepest and toughest road'. During our visit amidst Storm Ellen, Hardknott Pass was poetically christened 'A hellish slog made worse by an unforgiving cow.' The Lake District inspired Wordsworth to write. I was inspired to scream slurs at the Met Office. It wasn't the experience I had envisaged. Fast forward five years, and I had a chance of a Lakes redemption, courtesy of Hoseasons, who had kindly booked myself, my girlfriend and our two friends into a lodge near Ullswater. Very fancy pants. Ullswater (Image: Newsquest) Fear The lakes are an immensely popular destination for people in the north west, north east, Yorkshire and parts of the Midlands due to being in relatively close proximity. As mentioned earlier, we're from north Wales, so the drive up to the Lake District - depending on where - should usually take just over two hours. Did it hell. I always find it mind-boggling how Chester and Cumbria are part of the same region. The M6 isn't exactly scenic, and it was made all the worse by delay after delay. After the third alert, I looked at Georgia and bellowed the first Withnail quote of the weekend: "WE'VE COME ON HOLIDAY BY MISTAKE!" But it only got worse. A gentleman in a Merc with a strong desire for death took it upon himself to try and cause several crashes by diving in and out of lanes to beat the traffic. You're not Jason Bourne, give it a rest. But the lorries on the way up made Mr Bourne look like Brum. My god, I've never experienced anything like it. If you're knackered, kip! We genuinely had about eight near misses from lorries presumably going to Scotland straying absent-mindedly into our lane. The sheer fear on that drive up made our Garmins practically self-immolate. If you're going to make the journey up, honestly, be careful. But before long, we passed the border into Cumbria. Flusco Wood is the place to be if you're looking to stay in the Lake District (Image: Newsquest) Beer As soon as we started seeing signs for Keswick, Penrith, etc, all those motorway woes completely disappeared. Traffic vanished, and all we could see was a picture-perfect backdrop made all the better by our soundtrack, The Who's 'I Can See for Miles'. Our destination was Flusco Wood, in Ullswater. If you're looking to go, a 3-night stay for up to 4 people costs from £455 in June and from £539 in July. I could not recommend it more. The lodge was beautifully furnished, and we even had our own hot tub. Seconds after arriving, myself, Georgia, Jord and Sophie were all in it, beers in hand. Over the three days, we certainly had our fill. The local beers in Cumbria are just a different breed. I urge you to make the journey just for a local craft ale alone. One of us - I won't dob you in, Georgia - couldn't walk properly due to a 'foot injury'. So we were a little restricted on what we could do during the day. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah (Image: Newsquest) Ullswater was the main attraction for the weekend, so instead of walking, we thought we'd row. A boat for four people over four hours will set you back £60 altogether. It really is an excellent way to explore Ullswater if you don't fancy straining yourself too much. I've been to Wastwater, England's deepest lake, before, but felt like Ullswater had an unrivalled charm. There were also several pubs nearby, so we were sold. We stopped in at The Crown Inn, The George Hotel and The Pooley Bridge Inn, and I have to say, despite being busy, they were equally brilliant. If you want a quick pint or a bite to eat, I certainly recommend the Crown. For the service and the views. Next on our agenda was Penrith, where things got tasty. It isn't too far from the lodge, so taxis are pretty reasonable. If you're looking for a night out in the area, this will be the place to go; you just need to find the right place. (Image: Newsquest) The first pub we stopped at had a "Bacardi and Coke please", "We don't do cocktails", feel to it, but they're always the best ones. We chatted with locals and had an unforgettable night free from the stresses of work, life and home; it was giddily refreshing. Love My favourite part of the weekend, though, was meeting an American lady called Priscilla from Michigan. She was on a personal pilgrimage following her late husband's favourite folk band, Briar and Bramble. Despite being a widow and on a clearly emotional journey, she radiated a joyous energy that I had never witnessed before. Although we were initially strangers, she became one with our group almost instinctively. Hours passed trading tales of love, tribulations and laughter, where we got a real insight into how people turn mourning into something memorable. It was extremely sobering, and good god did we need that at this point in the night. After swapping numbers with Priscilla - who wants us to visit at some point, I love that about Americans - we soon returned to the lodge for a well-earned rest. What were you thinking? (Image: Newsquest) Loathing Our final day was spent cooking, watching Shrek, and visiting Penrith. How else do you spend a Sunday? Penrith in the day is stunning, I have to admit. The quiet alleys remind me of a less busy Brighton Lanes, and the cobbled streets take you back in time. But it couldn't be all good, could it? No, sir, I had to go and spoil it by sampling two of the most horrendous things your chip shops have to offer. Deep-fried haggis and a deep-fried Mars Bar. I thought that was a Scottish thing? But when I saw it on the menu, I had to try each of them. I'd rather not say anymore, other than whoever dreamt up those combinations needs a trial in the Hague. Recommended reading: I tried Gordon Ramsay's beef wellington at the Savoy - oh my I visited the Grand Hotel in Birmingham and owe an apology I went to Rhodes looking for love but ended up with a goose Love, again Overall, our visit to the Lake District completely made up for that horrendous 2020 trip in more ways than I could ever imagine. It lives up to your expectations in every single way, and then throws magical moments at you when you're least expecting it. Ok, holidays abroad are good, but I can think of no place better in the UK than the Lake District. A must-visit for all. Truly.
Glasgow Times
14-06-2025
- Glasgow Times
Fear, beer, love and loathing in the Lake District
Cumbria's crown jewel is arguably the definitive place to escape the foibles of everyday life. A seemingly limitless landscape that promises possibility, adventure and, above all else, escapism. Well, at least in England anyway. In 2020, two friends and I cycled from Snowdon to Scafell Pike and then to Ben Nevis for charity (beepity, beep, beep). Owing to its storied past, I was arguably looking forward to the Lake District section of the journey the most. The majestic home of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ruskin, Potter, and even Pallet. I was practically drunk at the thought of passing through an area that fosters such a deep connection to nature. Penrith (Image: Newsquest) We passed through Cockermouth, Keswick, Kendal, Whitehaven, Maryport, and Carlisle, among other places, tackling fatigue, bickering, COVID restrictions, and, above all else, the elements. On an average day, Hardknott Pass is described as 'England's steepest and toughest road'. During our visit amidst Storm Ellen, Hardknott Pass was poetically christened 'A hellish slog made worse by an unforgiving cow.' The Lake District inspired Wordsworth to write. I was inspired to scream slurs at the Met Office. It wasn't the experience I had envisaged. Fast forward five years, and I had a chance of a Lakes redemption, courtesy of Hoseasons, who had kindly booked myself, my girlfriend and our two friends into a lodge near Ullswater. Very fancy pants. Ullswater (Image: Newsquest) Fear The lakes are an immensely popular destination for people in the north west, north east, Yorkshire and parts of the Midlands due to being in relatively close proximity. As mentioned earlier, we're from north Wales, so the drive up to the Lake District - depending on where - should usually take just over two hours. Did it hell. I always find it mind-boggling how Chester and Cumbria are part of the same region. The M6 isn't exactly scenic, and it was made all the worse by delay after delay. After the third alert, I looked at Georgia and bellowed the first Withnail quote of the weekend: "WE'VE COME ON HOLIDAY BY MISTAKE!" But it only got worse. A gentleman in a Merc with a strong desire for death took it upon himself to try and cause several crashes by diving in and out of lanes to beat the traffic. You're not Jason Bourne, give it a rest. But the lorries on the way up made Mr Bourne look like Brum. My god, I've never experienced anything like it. If you're knackered, kip! We genuinely had about eight near misses from lorries presumably going to Scotland straying absent-mindedly into our lane. The sheer fear on that drive up made our Garmins practically self-immolate. If you're going to make the journey up, honestly, be careful. But before long, we passed the border into Cumbria. Flusco Wood is the place to be if you're looking to stay in the Lake District (Image: Newsquest) Beer As soon as we started seeing signs for Keswick, Penrith, etc, all those motorway woes completely disappeared. Traffic vanished, and all we could see was a picture-perfect backdrop made all the better by our soundtrack, The Who's 'I Can See for Miles'. Our destination was Flusco Wood, in Ullswater. If you're looking to go, a 3-night stay for up to 4 people costs from £455 in June and from £539 in July. I could not recommend it more. The lodge was beautifully furnished, and we even had our own hot tub. Seconds after arriving, myself, Georgia, Jord and Sophie were all in it, beers in hand. Over the three days, we certainly had our fill. The local beers in Cumbria are just a different breed. I urge you to make the journey just for a local craft ale alone. One of us - I won't dob you in, Georgia - couldn't walk properly due to a 'foot injury'. So we were a little restricted on what we could do during the day. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah (Image: Newsquest) Ullswater was the main attraction for the weekend, so instead of walking, we thought we'd row. A boat for four people over four hours will set you back £60 altogether. It really is an excellent way to explore Ullswater if you don't fancy straining yourself too much. I've been to Wastwater, England's deepest lake, before, but felt like Ullswater had an unrivalled charm. There were also several pubs nearby, so we were sold. We stopped in at The Crown Inn, The George Hotel and The Pooley Bridge Inn, and I have to say, despite being busy, they were equally brilliant. If you want a quick pint or a bite to eat, I certainly recommend the Crown. For the service and the views. Next on our agenda was Penrith, where things got tasty. It isn't too far from the lodge, so taxis are pretty reasonable. If you're looking for a night out in the area, this will be the place to go; you just need to find the right place. (Image: Newsquest) The first pub we stopped at had a "Bacardi and Coke please", "We don't do cocktails", feel to it, but they're always the best ones. We chatted with locals and had an unforgettable night free from the stresses of work, life and home; it was giddily refreshing. Love My favourite part of the weekend, though, was meeting an American lady called Priscilla from Michigan. She was on a personal pilgrimage following her late husband's favourite folk band, Briar and Bramble. Despite being a widow and on a clearly emotional journey, she radiated a joyous energy that I had never witnessed before. Although we were initially strangers, she became one with our group almost instinctively. Hours passed trading tales of love, tribulations and laughter, where we got a real insight into how people turn mourning into something memorable. It was extremely sobering, and good god did we need that at this point in the night. After swapping numbers with Priscilla - who wants us to visit at some point, I love that about Americans - we soon returned to the lodge for a well-earned rest. What were you thinking? (Image: Newsquest) Loathing Our final day was spent cooking, watching Shrek, and visiting Penrith. How else do you spend a Sunday? Penrith in the day is stunning, I have to admit. The quiet alleys remind me of a less busy Brighton Lanes, and the cobbled streets take you back in time. But it couldn't be all good, could it? No, sir, I had to go and spoil it by sampling two of the most horrendous things your chip shops have to offer. Deep-fried haggis and a deep-fried Mars Bar. I thought that was a Scottish thing? But when I saw it on the menu, I had to try each of them. I'd rather not say anymore, other than whoever dreamt up those combinations needs a trial in the Hague. Recommended reading: I tried Gordon Ramsay's beef wellington at the Savoy - oh my I visited the Grand Hotel in Birmingham and owe an apology I went to Rhodes looking for love but ended up with a goose Love, again Overall, our visit to the Lake District completely made up for that horrendous 2020 trip in more ways than I could ever imagine. It lives up to your expectations in every single way, and then throws magical moments at you when you're least expecting it. Ok, holidays abroad are good, but I can think of no place better in the UK than the Lake District. A must-visit for all. Truly.
The Guardian
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Beautifully, awfully funny': why Withnail and I is my feelgood movie
In the words of its writer and director, Withnail and I is a comedy that 'doesn't know it's funny'. To its star, it's about 'the nobility of failure'. It ends with its title character alone in the rain, his one friend gone, delivering a Hamlet soliloquy to an indifferent wolf. It's my feelgood movie. Bruce Robinson's British classic was released in 1987. He and Richard E Grant made the remarks above in 2007, at the British Film Institute. I was there, eager to hear Robinson discuss a movie based on his own experience. Themes abide. As he said recently about The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, his imperishable novel about his brutal childhood: 'It's very funny but also sad as fuck.' Robinson's first film was a novel before it was a screenplay. At the BFI, he said he knew he'd got his film right at an early screening, when a 'girl sort of threw up, laughing'. She had a point. Withnail and I is beautifully, awfully funny. It's based on Robinson's life in London in the 1960s. Two actors live in drink and squalor. One has a rich uncle with a house in the country, in the cold and distant north. The actors go there, swapping urban despair for rural horror. The uncle arrives, and attempts to seduce his nephew's friend. The actors return to London, to find a drug dealer asleep in their flat. One actor gets a job. He cuts his hair and leaves. As the late Kevin Jackson wrote: 'Try pitching that one to Dreamworks.' But there's more to the film than action and plot. Jackson also noted Robinson's mastery, how Withnail is a 'classic three-acter as outlined by Ring Lardner. Act One: Send a man up a tree. Act Two: Throw rocks at him. Act Three: Bring him down.' Almost all of Robinson's lines are funny. Not one is meant as a joke. The actors excel, precisely to Robinson's direction. As Withnail, Grant is flailing, vicious, amoral. As Marwood (as Robinson), Paul McGann is beautiful, soused and naive. As Uncle Monty, Richard Griffiths is technically and physically immense, oozing pathos as well as weirdly Bunterish threat. My brother bought Withnail back from Blockbuster. I was 16, keeping a diary, Marwood-esque, full of artful despair. My uncle was visiting, making dinner. If not Monty-esque, he was certainly a lovable rogue. We watched. Spellbound, we rewound the VHS and watched it over again. I loved Dylan and Hendrix on the soundtrack but I loved King Curtis and Al Bowlly too. I loved Robinson's lines and how his actors said them. I loved the moments of surreality – Monty's house of potted vegetables, the policeman's sudden shout – and the flashes of slapstick: Withnail nicked for drunk driving, failing to work the piss-filled device in his trousers. I loved how Grant found space for such physical comedy in Robinson's beautiful script. The tape went back to Blockbuster. I bought my own. I took it to college and watched it drunk and sober, with friends and alone, in halls and in my desperate pit of a house. Through early adulthood, into fatherhood, on DVD then streaming. To watch Withnail is to discover it again. Back home in the north with my brothers, walking the hills where we scattered our dad's ashes, we repeat Robinson's lines as a sort of catechism, swearwords said with vim. Our uncle is gone too. I haven't quoted Robinson's script here. Too obvious. One for the college bar bores. But I will let Robinson quote himself. In 2017, he and Grant returned to the BFI. The actor Withnail was based on, Vivian MacKerrell, never found much work. Like Marwood, Robinson found some. Uncle Monty is based on Franco Zeffirelli, the great director who cast Robinson in Romeo and Juliet, flew him to Rome, and promptly tried to seduce him. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion 'There's just me and him on the sofa,' Robinson said, audience, interviewer and Grant just trying to hold it together. ''What do you want to drink?' 'Bit of whisky.' And he leans over to me and says, 'Are you a sponge, or a stone?'' In the film, Monty says that to Marwood. At the BFI when I was there, it got the biggest laugh. On film, Marwood tells Monty: 'I voted Conservative.' On Zeffirelli's sofa, Robinson said: 'Bit of both, Franco.' Then he gave the smile he gave his would-be seducer: a shit-scared grin, half-polite, half-panicked, eyes searching for escape, as indelibly played by McGann. Robinson brought the house down. Bliss. Withnail and I is available on Max and the Criterion channel in the US and on Channel 4 in the UK
New European
15-03-2025
- Business
- New European
Brexit Britain is being outstripped by Slovenia and Malta
To call this year's UK Living Standards Review a sobering read is an understatement. The findings of this annual deep-dive are enough to make Patsy Stone, Father Jack Hackett and the Withnail acting family take up Dry January. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has found that the poorest households in the UK are now worse off than the poorest in Slovenia and Malta. Living standards in the wealthiest bits of the UK are comparable to those in other wealthy countries like France and Germany, but if you were to rank each of 269 European regions in terms of income, the poorest German region would rank 82nd – well above the EU average – and the poorest UK region 193rd – well below the EU average. Want to sober up a bit more? Real incomes in the majority of European regions have grown at a faster rate than those in the UK. Since 2020, the year of the pandemic but also of our official departure from the EU, we have fallen behind the average real wage growth of developed countries. At the turn of the millennium, we had broadly similar wage levels to Norway and Canada, which has since outstripped us. We were well ahead of New Zealand (which overtook UK wages in 2020) and Slovenia (which is set to do so in the next few years). Meanwhile, had UK wages grown as they did in the US after the 2008 financial crisis, UK workers would be £4,300 better off today. The NIESR is getting some stick for not naming Brexit as a direct cause of some of the UK's problems in this report. In fairness, it does note how membership of the European Union's single market has helped growth in some eastern European countries. And the NIESR did publish a big report on Brexit's effects on the UK just 16 months ago which said that the damage to GDP was at 2-3% of GDP in 2023 and would rise to 5-6% of GDP by 2035. This new report makes some short-term recommendations about easing our standard of living crisis – including removing the two-child limit for child benefit – that make for interesting reading as Labour mull cuts to the welfare budget. But in the longer-term, it seems clear that a game-changer is needed to break the spiral of low pay and low growth. Most of us agree on what that game-changer should be, but not everybody. A recent column by the Brexiteer Telegraph journalist Allister Heath began with two sentences that made the NIESR report seem cheerful: 'Britain stands alone in a brutish world. Our small, impoverished yet special nation has spent too long lying to itself'. Heath then stated, correctly, that the US was now a write-off. But some people can't see the obvious when it is staring them in the face. 'Europe isn't the answer,' wrote Heath. 'The EU is an imperialist technocracy with an obsession with Hegelian dialectics and a hatred for traitor-nations that have thrown off the shackles of the acquis communautaire.' To which the only correct responses are a) 'Parklife!' and b) pass that bottle this way, I need a drink.
