Woke up early and prepared the journey to Glasgow, but only to find that the drive would only take me about 2hrs 40mins when I keyed in the postcode of the University of Glasgow (instead of 5hrs I thought). Hence, I thought I would visit Grasmere village and Hill Top Farm although it’s really not fuel efficient. Arrived at Grassmere and went walking round the village. The main center is filled with hotels, B&Bs and shops. It’s quite a small area. Went further towards the residential area where there’s a nice lake. There’s a riverside walk trail but I didn’t do it due to time factor. 
Left for Hill Top farm and the car park is already full. There was 2 National Trust ladies standing guard so I asked them if there’s anywhere nearby I could park the car. They ask me to try at Near Sawrey. Parked my car at some kind of hall and walked back towards the Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm ticket office. It’s about 5 minutes walk away from the actual entrance of the Hill Top farm. Similar to the Beatrix Potter’s Gallery, it is time allocated entrance and mine is timed at 12.20pm, which is more than an hour away. It’s raining when I came out of the ticket office. With more than an hour to kill, I decided to check out a trail nearby as suggested by the ticket officer. The trail goes up a slope and I dare not go far up fearing my knee injuries while descending later on. So I went to the farm to visit the souvenir shop and also Potter’s garden. The shop is small with lots of tourist inside and I finished glancing through in 10mins. Went out of the farm and stood in the rain across the road under my umbrella looking at the hills, sheep and grassland. Finally, it stopped raining and the sky is blue again. Everything seemed refreshed after the shower. I went back into the farm to take the photo of the actual house. With 40mins to go and no other interesting places to go, I decided just to wait outside the house and do some people watching.
Finally it’s my turn to enter the house. No photo is allowed inside the house and they have kept the house in low light to preserve the things inside. Inside the house, there’s an actual wall fire in the living room, Potter’s art work, her collections and also some of her brother’s landscape paintings were also shown in various rooms in the house. At some areas, there's a Potter’s published book turned to a certain page. If you examine closely, you’ll find that the drawing is actually based on that place or the viewing angle.
Beatrix Potter moved to Castle Cottage (a bigger house), situated just across the road after marrying William Heelis, but she still comes back to Hill Top everyday to do her drawing and tend her garden. She extended one of her room upstairs to make it her office. In her office, there were landscape drawings done by her brother, and also a drawing each from her parents. Potter took after her father in animal illustrations while her brother took after her mother in landscape paintings. From the window of her office, you could see the by the willow tree.
After finishing the visit, I went back to my car, made myself some soup to go with biscuits for lunch. Then I set off to Glasglow. The scenery along the route is very nice, grassland and hilly terrains. All these changes as I near Glasglow, it’s obvious that I’m entering a city. Tall buildings, queuing traffics and flats. I check-in to the student’s dormitory of University of Glasgow at 5.30pm. The university opens up the hostel to the public during semester breaks. For a mere ￡16.80, I got a spacious single room (room 336) to myself. There are plenty of shower rooms and toilets outside the hallway and several kitchens in each floor. The tenants of a few rooms will be designated to use a certain kitchen. Also on each floor there’s a laundry room and it’s absolutely free (just bring your own washing powder or buy from the reception for ￡1). Also, if you have your own laptop, you can borrow a RJ45 cable from the reception and you can surf for free. This is the best hostel I’ve ever stayed in by far and it’s definitely so much better compared to the dorm I stayed when I was studying in UTM years back.
Although I wanted to go out and explore Glasgow, I know I needed to first settle my accommodations for the following few nights in Isle of Skye and Edinburgh. I decided to spend 3 nights each in Isle of Skye and Edinburgh. With the internet access, I started calling the hostels in Isle of Skye. It’s probably due to the Bank Holiday Monday that I could only get accommodations for Friday and Sunday nights in 2 different hostels in Portree. Next I tried several other hostels, B&Bs and Inns but to no vain. Gosh, how time flies by. I stopped my search as it’s getting really late and I need to do my laundry and also shower. Well, I’ll just have to see how it goes when I get to Portree tomorrow. Made myself some hot chocolate and went to bed at 2am.
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