Lake District Literature

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Romantic poets, alcoholic sheep dip, paralytic poultry and talking animals.

‘The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal.’ So wrote Alfred Wainwright, who first came to the Lake District in 1930 and was immediately smitten. Although for some he is the quintessential grumpy old fell walker, Wainwright spent 13 years of evenings and weekends crafting a beautiful seven volume love letter to Lakeland – his mountain guides with their hand-drawn maps and beautiful copperplate handwriting. As essential a piece of fell walking kit as a Thermos and Kendal Mint Cake, I was clutching one that morning as I stumbled up the popular route over the Old Man of Coniston. As a Lancastrian, there’s a certain pride in knowing that this was once the highest peak in Lancashire. I paused for a moment to get my breath back. Only to have it taken away again by the view.  You would call it a picture postcard panorama, that is if you had ever seen a postcard so lovely and enticing; looking across slender Coniston Water (which has its very own Gormley statue, where the Swallows and Amazons sailed in Arthur Ransome’s classic tale and over to John Ruskin’s old house at Brantwood, possibly the most perfectly sited house in England. Was this also the lake that Wordsworth wandered alongside in that poem?  No, that was Ullswater, another gem – especially if you like your sailing – up in the North-Eastern corner. Generally, the further North you go in the Lakes the quieter it gets.

“But no matter how many people crowd into this enchanted area, you can still escape to blissful solitude in sublime scenery if you know where you’re going. Or you ask someone who knows.”

Or, like I did, you can revel in the company of others and mingle with the literary pilgrims in Grasmere, described by Wordsworth as “The loveliest spot that man hath ever found”. Returning the compliment, the town’s memorial to him is the Wordsworth Trust, which I discovered to be a fascinating museum with one of the greatest collections of manuscripts, books and paintings relating to British Romanticism.

Feeling just a little touristy and frankly enjoying it, I headed for Dove Cottage, where the poet and his sister once lived and had eight years of ‘plain living, but high thinking’. Chum Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought nothing of walking the twelve miles over Dunmail Raise from his house to here, but then this was a chap who made the first recorded ascent of Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain, in frock coat and with a writing desk and quill pen no doubt. I was surprised to learn that Dove Cottage had once been a pub, though no pint had been pulled there for at least a couple of centuries, so the prospect of a visit to a brewery proved to be irresistible. I’d struck up a conversation with a small group who had their minibus parked nearby and that was where they were heading. Accepting their invitation, I climbed in for the drive to Kendal.