Stage 2 - we wandered lonely as two clouds

As we drove into the Lake District, Husband bemoaned the fact that,as he was driving, he couldn't look at the scenery properly. I replied that he wasn't missing much. 'It's just a lake.'

I think, if he hadn't been driving, he would have rolled his eyes.

But a lake is just a large flat body of water, unlike the sea, which I love for its ever-changing moods. No, it's not the lakes that make the Lake District beautiful as much as the mountains.

We were staying in an hotel on the edge of Windermere, which is England's largest lake at ten miles long and one mile wide at its widest, but it was the lakes slightly further north that were lovelier because of the more dramatic hills surrounding them.

We spent one afternoon walking around Lake Buttermere.

The Lake District is, of course, Wordworth and Beatrix Potter country. Wordsworth lived for some time in Dove Cottage in the village of Grasmere, with his sister and then later, with his wife and her sister as well. Plus several children. It's little wonder he preferred to spend his days walking the fells.

In Wordsworth's day, Dove Cottage was on the main road and he grumbled about the number of tourists passing his house. However that didn't stop him writing a guidebook to the area (still in print).

He was good friends with poets, De Quincy and Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and both visited him in the cottage. They were both also opium addicts, and, on display, in the cottage is the scales used for weighing out the opium. The guide didn't say if it was the host's duty to provide the drug for his guests.

'Morning, Samuel, here's your coffee and toast. Oh, and your daily opium ration. I hope it is to your liking. The supplier told me that it's a particularly fine blend from the Northern China hills.'

When Wordsworth was offered the post of Poet Laureate he refused saying that poetry should be inspired not written to order, but he must have been persuaded because, for the last six years of his life he was poet to the Queen. However he didn't write a single poem for Victoria in that time, making him the only poet in PL history to not write a dedicated poem to the monarch.

By the time we got to Miss Potter's house it was closed. At least the ticket office was closed and we couldn't work out exactly which house was hers. Apparently the National Trust, owners of the property, think it is being over-visited and try to limit numbers. Not signposting the house is one way of putting off tourists, I suppose.

There were hundreds of ducks and swans on Windermere, and, unlike the NT, they like visitors who feed them till they're bursting. They can be rather demanding though.

One thing Wordsworth would not have to have had put up with was low-flying jets. What effect they have on innocent civilians in Iraq I can't imagine but they frightened me to death. The pilot of this one gave us a wave!

xx