Ullswater Wake and Surf.

Ullswater Wake and Surf is a local business, based at Waterside campsite on the shore of Ullswater. They offer a range of activities, including archery and axe throwing, but specialise in water based sports. They have a large range of paddle boards and can provide tuition for the beginners. They also do wake surfing, with full tuition, so get in touch with them to find out more.

https://wakeandsurf.co.uk/

Photography by https://www.markwilliamsonphotography.com/

Local Ullswater bus

A new hopper bus is being trialled this Summer, to help reduce the traffic volume in the Ullswater area. It’s a great initiative, and is the brainchild of local members of the community and the Ullswater Association. The nearest stop from Sparket Mill is the Quiet Site, which is roughly a 30 minute walk away and will enable holiday makers and locals to get to Pooley Bridge, Lowther castle or Howtown at a very reasonable price.

Please have a look at the website for more details, https://situcumbria.org.uk/ullswater-bus/

Fields, we’ve never had a field before!

Having moved from a ‘semi’ rural location, to Sparket Mill, we now had some land. Not much in local terms, but a couple of fields that are bordered by a river. Having followed some of the local farmers on social media, I knew of one person that I had contact. This was Danny Teasdale at Ullswater CIC, https://www.ucmcic.com/

Danny knows about river catchments and has been instrumental in lots of local biodiversity schemes and has worked with local farmers to help them keep their lad productive, whilst benefitting nature. Danny brough in Rob Dixon from Wild Lakeland, https://www.wildlakeland.com/ Rob is a very talented ecologist who did a survey on our fields for us. It turns out that we have a huge number of wildflowers for such a small patch. This was music to our ears and exactly what we’d hoped for.

When we moved here, there were some sheep grazing on the land. As much as we love sheep, we had to make the decision to ask the farmer to remove them until we knew what we wanted to do. The land begin to grow and show us the diversity that was present in such a small space. We did end up with four sheep that spent our first Winter with us, but the grazing stock had been dramatically reduced. Even with those four sheep, we noticed that the regeneration was slow and the young growth was allowed to develop. This was always going to be a learning curve and will take time, but part of the fun is the journey.

The Williamsons move to Sparket Mill

Hi, we’re the Williamson family and this is the first blog post of our new life at Sparket Mill. After many years spent under canvas talking about how we could possibly move to the Lake District and make it our home, we finally made that move in 2021. The draw of bringing our children up in the place that we called our spiritual home soon became a reality.

(just for the avoidance of doubt, that is NOT Sparket Mill in the back of our family photo!)

So the dream move was done and we are now knee deep in boxes after leaving our native Cheshire. However the hard work was just about to begin…

So what next..?

Well let’s start with our back story shall we?

Kristin and I are both from Cheshire and have lived there all of our lives. When we first started ‘dating’, our first holiday was a camping trip to Waterside Farm on the shores of Ullswater. Ever since then we’ve been coming back to the Lakes in all sorts of weather at different times of the year and our love for the place has only grown.

I (Mark) am a commercial photographer and have spent most of my life working for creative agencies, specialising in documenting people at work and working on marketing campaigns. If you’re interested, here’s my website, markwilliamsonphotography.com

Kristin used to be an event planner and her speciality was marquee weddings and parties, which she was (and still is) brilliant at. With the view to spending more time with our children, we decided to call time on the weekend wedding work. This all coincided with our move to the Lake District (and a certain pandemic, that brought my work to a grinding halt), so 2021 was a pretty crazy year. We bought a 17th century, grade II listed mill with the view to offering some form of holiday accommodation to help suppliment our struggling incomes, but more importantly to raise our children in a more outdoor, natural environment.

The transition wasn’t totally smooth. We had planned to do this before they had started secondary education, but the first few months were hard work. My photography work was still really struggling, Kristin was on her third job in 12 months and our eldest was not enjoying her new school. Dreams don’t just land on your lap and we knew we had some work to do.