Earlier this year my family and I made a trip to Sizergh castle in Cumbria, not too far North of where we live.

Sizergh Castle wasn’t quite what we expected, so we finished there early and with some time to spare we decided to go to Kendal.

On the way there I remembered that a few years earlier I read about a stationery shop in Kendal: Iridium.

Trying to link to this blog post I noticed that unfortunately, the A Fool With A Pen blog, where I first found out about Iridium, doesn’t exist anymore. Luckily I was able to find an archived version of the blog post. If you can spare a few minutes please take the time to read this blog post. The blogger took the shop over for a day and wrote about his or her experience.

Our trip was a few years after I read the blog post and we originally didn’t plan to visit to the shop, so we didn’t do any research, but luckily the blog post and the name of the shop were so memorable that it was easy to find the shop – on the Internet. Finding the shop in reality wasn’t easy, though. I thought I just put the name in Google Maps and it will lead us there, but finding the entrance to the lane that leads to Iridium was rather difficult. We expected this shop to be on a normal street, which might have been a contributing factor. After a few attempts we finally found the lane “New Shambles” and the shop, but unless you are familiar with Kendal or spend a bit longer in this town you are unlikely to find this shop by coincidence.

Iridium isn’t big but is making great use of the available space and is full of items you normally only see online or might not have come across before. Prices were also very reasonable for a brick and mortar store.

Malcolm, the owner of the shop was very friendly, helpful and knowledgable. We couldn’t have asked for more.

The visit a few months ago long ago, but I am not sure whether Iridium is still open. According to Google it’s ‘permanently closed’ and I can’t find social media pages for Iridium but the owner’s LinkedIn page shows that it’s open.

Of course, Google isn’t always correct, but this isn’t a good sign.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from the shop. If you’re near Kendal please have a look. It’s very unlikely that you’ll regret the visit.