Snapshots of Grasmere

Even in August, the Lake District is smothered in clouds.

It rained; we got wet; we stopped for a nice cuppa.

I know that those beautiful green hills

draw legions of walkers

But for me, this was the quintessence

of our visit to Grasmere.

Apparently, Dorothy Wordsworth managed to spend

24 pounds on tea in one year.

The rent on Dove Cottage was only 8 pounds,

just to put it into perspective.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

is on every menu.

Do try it if you get the chance.

For such a tiny village, there is a

dense concentration of cafes and tea-shops.

There is plenty of daffodil kitsch, too.

You can try to "wander lonely as a cloud"

around Grasmere,

but I doubt you will manage it.

Dove Cottage

was once a public house.

Perhaps the conviviality lived on

in the walls and slate floor and buttery?

I wonder what Dorothy and William drank

with their many illustrious guests:

Coleridge (who lived with them, off and on)

and Walter Scott and Robert Southey

and Charles and Mary Lamb (another famous sister)

and Thomas De Quincey, the infamous opium-eater

who later took over the lease.

So much poetry in those walls,

but no desk.

William Wordsworth wrote in a cutlass chair,

so-called because you could sit in it

without removing your sword.

I'm fairly sure

despite his Revolutionary and Romantic reputation

he subscribed to the

"pen is mightier than the sword" philosophy.

Anyway, his sister tended to act

as his amanuensis.

The house was incredibly dark

with a coal-burning stove

and not much ventilation.

No wonder the Wordsworths

spent most of their time

in Nature.

Dove Cottage was "acquired for the nation" in 1890.

(Wordsworth's Lakeland.)

Such a plain gravestone for Dorothy.

Ernest de Selincourt described her literary contributions:

"probably the most remarkable and the most distinguished

of English prose writers

who never wrote a line for the general public."

Her Grasmere Journals,

just four small notebooks,

were written for William's pleasure.

Her observances inspired some of his

most memorable poems.

I tried to read The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth

while we were in Grasmere,

but I kept getting distracted by other things,

like The Lives of the English Rakes,

found in a bookshop in Bowness.

Gray and green

are the colours of Grasmere.

If we had stayed longer,

I might have grown a layer of moss, too.

This pond is just outside of Grasmere

in some woods familiar to William and Dorothy.

William liked to declaim as he walked,

and Dorothy collected his words like

so many drops of rain.

I tried to get Sigmund to compose some poetry

on the spot

but he declined.

He still feels bitter about studying

The Prelude when he was a schoolboy.

This is the most charming

of the many, many sheep pictures

that I felt compelled to snap.

Sheep are a common sight in the Lake District.

Although the Wordsworth industry dominates Grasmere

it isn't terribly touristy.

This circus tent was an incongruous sight.