Charles Bricker writes from Ambleside:

I’m out of Paris with 11 days to myself before I storm the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

I decided months ago to return to the Lake District of England. I don’t deal well with crowds. I need beauty, quiet, nice people, no honking horns from impatient motorists, no rap music and, more than anything, a sense that there is still some respect for nature in the world.

It’s all there in the Lake District, and this is my fourth trip. I’ve stayed in Bowness-on-Windermere, which is quite full of holiday makers and day trippers throughout the summer. And I’ve stayed in Grasmere, where William Wordsworth lived, and died. It’s a beautiful village, but a village nevertheless and not bubbling over with hotels and stores.

This time, Ambleside, about five miles east of Grasmere and just large enough.

The Lake District this time of the year is a fascinating mix of young and old tourists. I’m not sure why the elderly come here, like the 60ish Scottish couple who sat at the adjacent table as I dined at Mathews Bistro the other night. They seemed surprised to find out I was off on another hike in the morning.

“Oh no, we don’t hike,” she said with a thick Scottish accent. “We just like it here.”

As do I. But this place is fundamentally for hiking and I’ve had some memorable walks here, including one two years ago that took nearly six hours to complete. Before you compliment me on my stamina, know that the hike should have been four hours.

You do get a bit lost, for two reasons. First, the well worn paths you start on become more than a little vague as you get up with the mountain goats. In fact, it’s easy to lose a trail where they’re nothing but rock.

Also, the walk guidebooks you can buy at the local Tourist Information shops for a couple pounds are outdated. I’ve done hikes where I followed the book directions to the last dotted i and gotten temporily lost because, for one reason or another, the trails change.

The six-hour hike left me scratching my head after four hours, but I fortunately ran into one of those classic Lake hikers – real boots, walking stick, jaunty cap.

“Can you help me find my way back to Grasmere?” I inquired. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Just walk across this meadow here and when you get to the edge, look down and you’ll see a tarn (a small body of water in the mountains). Go down to the tarn and you’ll see a footpath around it, and it will take you straight back to Grasmere.”

He was spot on with the directions, but there was no path down to the tarn. I had to slosh my way down a small creek, stepping on rocks until I reached the bottom, and it took an hour. But I got back all right, had a pint of something or other at the Lions Inn pub and was in bed and sleeping soundly by 9.

I’ve got three more days here and, while the weather has dropped into the high 50s, it’s dry and I’m a happy puppy. I might go fishing again, as I did at the trout farm south of here. Caught three, one at 2.25 pounds, and released one. Went back to Mathews and for 10 quid the chef grilled my trout and told me how he holds the record out of that lake – a 26-pounder that took more than an hour to land.

It was a bit of cheat by me. This was, after all, a stocked pond. But, hey, a trout is a trout and I need my protein.

Go fish. Notice the swan behind me, waiting for the fish to be gutted so he can be fed.