11 days / Pooley Bridge and Ullswater

When we think of Penrith and The Border, it's easy to forget that it includes part of the Lake District and Ullswater, one of the finest of the lakes. Today we visited the Pooley Bridge farmers market. I know many of the stallholders, being a member of Made In Cumbria. They vary from very small businesses, essentially selling home baking, to small businesses with well developed products and exquisite packaging. I had a fascinating conversation with Jenny who has two hives of bees and is ambitious for more. Jenny's problem is finding land which is near enough to a good supply of flowers. I'm sure she'll succeed.
Jenny's challenge is the high price of land, which bears little relationship to the income that can be generated from it. She could rent land but beekeeping is a long term project and she'd be faced with the possibility of spending years planting wildflowers with no real security of tenure.

 Whilst in Pooley Bridge we met a young couple, both with steady and essential local employment. Their joint earnings qualified them for a mortgage of around £100,000. Anyone who knows the area will appreciate that there is absolutely no chance of buying anything for this amount.
I then saw the headline in the picture above. (The Clegg story is a piece of nonsense about the Elgin marbles) The sub heading says "Latest figures reveal good news across UK" Good news for who exactly?
Certainly not good news for the young couple in Pooley Bridge. Is it good news for the retired community who are now richer on paper and whose estate will be that much larger when they pass on?
Or is it good news for those who need to borrow against their homes, which you may remember is partly what got us all into the mess that the world economy is currently in.
We then went around some of the villages in the area where we say little clusters of former council houses - all sold off into the private sector and all now well out of reach of the local workers who they were built to house. And why were they sold off? Because Margaret Thatcher wanted to create Conservative voters.
It was these publicly owned houses that formerly stabilised the market in these places. Without the anchor that they provided, we have witnessed the price rises that have put even the small basic homes well out of reach. Remember this legacy when you decide which way to vote at this election.