Autumn Therapy at Englethwaite Hall

This is the main lake at Englethwaite Hall Caravan and Motorhome Club site, near Carlisle in Cumbria.

The photo was taken at 12:45pm on the 14th of October 2020 and recently developed with excellent Luminar AI from a single RAW file.

We’ve been coming here for over 20 years and have always found it really relaxing and therapeutic.

In early February this year, my wife, Gill, had a stroke and has since been in recovery. Part of post-stroke recovery involves dealing with anxiety, and other things related to neuroplasticity. With all the Covid shit going on, support from therapists was postponed for a while, but later it was resumed.

One of the processes of dealing with her anxiety was to close her eyes and imagine an activity and place where she felt totally relaxed. Above our TV, we have a 1.5 metre wide panoramic canvas print of the main lake at Englethwaite Hall that I took a few years ago.

Walking the path around these lakes and admiring this view was her imagined activity, having done this many times over the decades.

Upon returning to Englethwaite this year, I discovered this very appropriately placed bench facing the view across the main lake.

Today, we both walked the path around the three little lakes with our dog, Ruby; and what Gill had conjured up from memory during her therapy sessions became reality, once again.