I celebrated the new year in the Lake District with my wife, Jacob and several of my friends. We hired a beautiful traditional cottage in Eskdale, (about an hour from Ambleside) which slept eight people.

It  was a fantastic looking building with low ceilings, an outside toilet  – also had an indoor one btw – and a lovely coal fire which managed to keep us all warm and toasty during the long winter evenings.

We spent the majority of the nights testing out the latest board games but the overall winner for us was Articulate which is great fun for quick fire rounds and making your friends shout out ridiculous answers.

In the game, you basically have to describe a word on a card without saying it – it’s not too difficult and can be played by all of the family.

We also invented our own game called the ‘After Eight game’ which was truly hilarious. The person in question has to put an After Eight on their face and make it slide down by only using their facial muscles and nothing else – the aim of the game is to get it into the mouth and believe me it can be very amusing watching the various facial expressions.

As we were in Eskdale we decided to take a journey on the Lake District’s longest miniature railway to Ravenside – pictured below. The journey takes about 45 minutes through some beautiful scenery.

To be honest, we spent the majority of our time trekking, mountain biking and then frequenting the local watering holes tasting the delight of the local ales such as Timothy Taylor.

We all had a great time and all I can say is the lakes are stunning at this time of year but saying that I am sure they look amazing all year round.

About Chris Norton

Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.