I Wandered Soggy, As a Cloud (w/apologies to WW)

Report from the Lake District:

So, I’m sitting here doing what Wordsworth says poetry is all about: “recollecting emotion in tranquillity.” After this trip, I can see what he means. There is little tranquillity in this vastness. The world is all excitement and wind and clouds and color and rain and timeless meandering stone fences. This place is vast. The word sublime is not inappropriate. What began as a literary trip to see the Wordsworth’s home and haunts turned into a physical journey through his inspiration. This is the best of England’s walking tours. Not only can one walk the very same routes that set the tone and inspiration for Wordsworth’s Michael and Daffodils, not to mention the autobiographical tales in The Prelude, while vaunting the crags and wandering the countryside, you can actually feel what Wordsworth wove into words. If child is father to man, this natural fireworks display of grass, rocks, and cloud splattered sky is father to the poet. It’s like going to the biggest cathedral in the world, with the finest stained glass landscapes and lapis skies – and even more brilliant when the rain would let up for a while. But then the rain is just another tile in the mosaic. We fought the rain all the while we were in the Lake District, but in the end we were rewarded with the grand finale: a great rainbow. Poetic justice at its best.

I know I’m often accused of hyperbole, but this place has a lot of deep juju for me. Wordsworth and the professor who introduced him to me are pretty much responsible for who I am and where I am and who I’m with in my life these days, and it’s just an awesome privilege to actually walk the hallowed ground of the poets who changed the way we see the world. They are the ones that fed me through the lean times. Ah Mecca . . .

Dennis



Here’s a little travelogue:

We arrived in Grasmere on Wednesday evening and promptly got lost looking for our guest house; in my imagination of the town, it was tiny and clustered in one spot, so we had our first lesson in Lake District geography: the towns are long and winding, with several main roads, and dozens of similarly-named hotels and guest houses.

Anyway, when we found it, we were delighted; it's the family home of Dennis and Christine Batey, and they converted two of their upper rooms to en-suite guest rooms. Their daughter, Helena, was staying in one and we had the other (which meant lots of privacy and personal attention). The full English breakfast with home-made bread was YUMMY and very welcome when we set out in the pouring rain each morning.

Thursday morning, we suited up as best we could and headed into town; first stop was to buy rain gear (gaiters and waterproof rain pants). We walked out to Dove Cottage, the Wordsworth home from 1808-1817, by way of the graveyard behind St. Oswald's church, where we paid homage to William and sister Dorothy. The cottage was an interesting peek into early-19th-C life, and we saw the actual washbasin that Wordsworth washed his face in each morning ("Hmm . . . splash, splash . . . let's see . . .splash . . . 'I wandered lonely as a lamb?' No . . . splash, splash").

After a tour through the Wordsworth Museum, we started a four-mile walk around Rydal Water. After slogging through rain for two hours, we made the halfway point and decided to catch a bus back to Grasmere (after a nice hot bowl of lentil soup). It was an incredibly beautiful walk, and we vowed to buy waterproof shoes so that we could not be cowed by mere weather again!! Here (and above) is some of what we saw that day:

We ended Thursday by taking a short walk around the town of Ambleside and having some Thai food, which was very good. Friday started out gloomy and gray but dry, so we suited up again to tackle the 1000-foot ascent up the fells to Easedale Tarn, a lake nestled between two fell-tops. Not long into our walk, the rain began, and by the time we got to the tarn, we were bent over, clutching our hoods, leaning into the driving wind and rain (but we got there, dammit!). Here's the tarn, in one furtive photo Dennis took while dodging raindrops, cowering behind a boulder.

No bus to take us back down, and the usual stones crossing the Sour Milk Gill were under rapidly-running whitewater, so we turned around and went back the way we came. As we descended, we got a brief hour of sun and clearing, so we were able to take a few more photos:































Saturday is the day we left, so, of course, it was bright and clear. Our train didn't leave Windermere until 5:30, so we did have time for another walk -- this time, the other side of the Rydal Water walk that we hadn't been able to finish on Thursday. We were rewarded with amazing views and a tramp inside a really cool cave.




All in all, we loved our weekend in the Rain District -- oops, that's Lake District -- and hope to return (with waterproof boots). We decided that Grasmere is indeed the best place to stay (Mary is right; Rick Steves is wrong), Keswick is boring and touristy, pub food has improved mightily from its past reputation, and walking 20 miles is quite good justification for eating apple pie and Victoria Cake (from Baldry's in Grasmere -- another excellent recommendation from Mary).

We also decided that we love the fact that you can get good home-made soup almost anywhere in the UK (not that industrial canned shit most American restaurants serve), that children shouldn't be named Findlay, that Wordsworth must have had great butt muscles (from climbing all those hills), and that you can never pack too many plastic bags. :)

Gin