July 2^nd & July 4^th, 2016

STRANGE SHORE: Dove Cottage in Grasmere; The Coffin Route; Rydal Mount; Beatrix Potter Gallery in Hawkshead; Hill Top near Sawrey.

SUNDRY LAND: The Lake District, Cumbria. United Kingdom

WANDERING WAY: Following in the Footsteps of William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter

Smooshing together my visits to the literary homesteads of William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter into one ambitious account may seem foolhardy – almost as foolhardy as touring the entire length of the Lake District in five days – but how else could I convey the stark difference between the Romantic North of William Wordsworth’s Lake District with the Pastoral South of Beatrix Potter country? Before I actually visited the Lake District, I imagined the entire area to be one blasted cliff, but the craggy, hilly parts are further north while the southern areas are full of gently rolling fields. To put it another way, even if it’s all fairly Romantic, the northern climes might be accompanied by the First Movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj4JFAQ0N8c) while the southern bits of the Lake District call out for the First Movement of the Sixth Symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2VY33VXnrQ). No matter where you go though, there are sheep.

They don’t baaaaaah Beethoven, but you can see them trying.

Most Uncomfortable Literary Home – Dove Cottage

Dove Cottage looks pretty, doesn’t it?

At first glance, you might even imagine it to be a pleasant place to live. 

Ha. Only after ducking into the doorway of Dove Cottage does it become crystal clear why William Wordsworth devoted a great deal of time to experiencing the grandeur of nature outside. When Wordsworth decided to live near lovely Grasmere in 1799, he actually bought a pub called “The Dove and Olive Bough” and converted its narrow shallows into a “cottage” – talk about a bad real estate decision. As you might expect from a converted pub, the first floor has all the charm of a beer-stained hovel.

Accentuating the dreariness of this first impression is a feeble portrait of the family dog, “Pepper,” which greets the visitor. 

Whew, what a painting; talk about animal abuse. However, as might be expected from a dog owned by a famous poet, Pepper springs from noble literary stock. The canine was given to Wordsworth by Sir Walter Scott, who liked dogs so much that he couldn’t bear to spade, neuter, or take any other steps to control the reproductive sprees of his pack. So, Scott brought puppies as presents to all his hosts. Let us all be grateful that we’ve never had the opportunity to invite over Sir Walter Scott for a long weekend.

After navigating the stairway without bumping my head, I commented, “Oh, it’s not so bad up here!”

Sure, I nearly tripped over Wordsworth’s writing chair, but my fellow tourists were too busy making similar sighs of relief to notice. I nosed around several intriguing objects, such as Wordsworth’s favorite portrait of himself:

He felt it made him look like a pirate – I agree.  

On a nearby wall is the infinitely better looking Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

One wonders why Wordsworth felt comfortable having Coleridge as a frequent houseguest. Wouldn’t Mary Wordsworth (his wife) or Dorothy Wordsworth (his sister) fancy this blushing hero as they co-habitated in the itty-bitty cottage? Hmmm, we do know that tensions sprang up between the two men. It might’ve been because Coleridge was high as a kite on opium, however. Or maybe it was the poetic rivalry.

Here is my favorite piece Wordsworth memorabilia, his passport from 1837:

In 1837, English and French passports did not include photographs; instead, the port authorities would identify the traveller by using a physical description printed on the document. In this case, Wordsworth is described as,

Height……………5 feet 9 ½ English inches

Age………………66 years

Forehead…………Bald

Eyebrows………...White

Eyes………………Grey

Nose..……………Medium

Chin………………Round

Face………………Oval

Complexion………Ordinary

Even if you detest your passport photo, you must admit it’s not as humbling as this government-issued itemization. I daren’t even imagine my own. Would my complexion be “ordinary,” too? What might be deemed “extraordinary”? How would they have described Byron? Or Keats? 

A Most Sublime Stroll – The Coffin Route

In 1813, Wordsworth finally moved out of Dove Cottage (selling it to another famous opium-eater Thomas de Quincy, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8544969-the-english-opium-eater), but he only moved forty-five minutes away to Rydal. Well, it would be forty-five minutes away for a person who wasn’t prone to getting slightly lost…unlike me.

Then again, I’m almost always slightly lost – it’s very nearly an existential condition, only occasionally eased by my iPhone’s GPS. But guess what? There’s quite spotty GPS coverage out in the middle of the Lake District, and so this directionally-challenged wanderer was left to her own meagre resources. 

For me, this laughably simple forty-five-minute walk took about an hour and a half as I diverted, backtracked, and pondered a few perplexing forks in the road.

The trick to being lost is not minding that you’re lost. Over the years, I’ve accepted it as “an excellent way to see wonderful sights that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.” I repeat this mantra to myself as I’m huffing and puffing my way up a hill that I needn’t have descended in the first place. Particularly as it begins raining.

“The Coffin Route” was used, yes, to transport coffins in Wordsworth’s day. In preserving this memento mori for tourists silly enough to imagine their time on earth to be infinite, the conservators of the Lake District accentuate the sublimity of the surroundings. Soak up the beauty now; there may be no tomorrow; moreover, someone will probably drop your coffin on a rocky trail like this one.

Rocky, indeed. On the rare occasions when I stumbled (literally) upon other travelers, they were invariably wearing wet-weather gear and stout hiking boots, which put my polka-dotted umbrella, tweed coat, and three-year-old tennis shoes to shame. On the bright side, I didn’t slip, fall, or get a hole in my sole, which is a small miracle.

All kidding and kvetching aside, it was sublime. The scenery was so gorgeous that it didn’t matter that I was wet, cold, and slightly lost. I’d fired up Bach’s “BMV 1017 Sonata #4 for Violin and Harpsicord in C Minor” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyAgFAbdIbc) on my otherwise useless iPhone, and I moved through a landscape too beautiful for prose. So listen to Bach (who’s technically Baroque and not Romantic, but still works) as you look through my photographic journey, and end by reading Wordsworth’s quintessential Lake District poems: “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” (http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html) and “An Evening Walk”(http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww114.html). Enjoy!

Best Upgrade – Rydal Mount

By the time I finally emerged from The Coffin Route, I was exceedingly happy to see this sign:

Teatime happened immediately afterwards:

Word to the wise, Cumbrian tea cake is excellent.

As for Rydal Mount itself, it must be said that Wordsworth’s taste and pocketbook had matured by the time he’d moved; his second try at architectural design stands as a testament to the hard lesson he must’ve learnt at that defunct pub, Dove Cottage. 

Rydal Mount is light, airy, and spacious – it hardly came as a surprise when the guide mentioned that his descendants still use it as a summer home. I particularly appreciated his library’s bookcase, which reminded me of my own (sans the cavalier all in red):

However, the view from his library is aspirational:

The grounds are even more beautiful than the house:

Good for Wordsworth, I say! If any poetically-inclined guests decided to eat a little opium after dinner, he could just send them to wander in the gardens for the evening. There are benches aplenty for stargazing amid the gusts on the aeolian harp’s “soft floating witchery of sound” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52301).

Most Endearing Anthropomorphic Animals – Beatrix Potter Gallery in Hawkshead

From North to South! To reach the charming hamlet of Hawkshead, one must circumnavigate Lake Windermere either by bus or car; alternatively, it’s possible sail or ferry across the lake if you're in an aquatic mood. It’s worth the trip because The Beatrix Potter Gallery appears to hold the majority of the artist’s work in its impressive collection, and nothing can familiarize a person with the pastoral charms of the southern Lake District like a bunch of anthropomorphized woodland creatures in adorable Victorian costume.  

In fact, I was so charmed by these dormice, foxes, badgers, frogs, swine, squirrels, and cats that I felt myself ready for another walk – what a breeze to walk from Hawkshead to Hill Top! The most natural thing in the world, surely. What could possibly happen in a happy thoroughfare where animals sip tea and wear aprons?

Yet I had learned something from my trek through Wordsworth's territory. First, it’s important to procure some kind of map, even if it’s a cheesy tourist map you cadged from a brochure:

Second, one must seek the proper nourishment before (rather than after) the walk:

I was all set to go! When I asked an eminently rational member of The Heritage Trust team about the path between Hawkshead and Hill Top, he advised me that they were still in the process of building a pedestrian road.

I (Sharon Fulton) returned, “Is it okay to walk on the regular road?”

Rational Heritage Trust Employee: “Yes…it’s a little narrow though.”

SF, laughing, “I’m not going to get hit by a car, am I?”

RHTE: “I might take the bus.”

SF: “But I can walk?”

RHTE: “Well, yes…”

In retrospect, I learned a valuable lesson. If a member of Heritage Trust (or any local) gives you a piece of advice, follow it.

It started so well. There was even another walker (in reasonable foul-weather gear) starting out in front of me. He must've been walking very quickly, however. I never saw him again. 

Indeed, the lane was narrow, but have no fear…there was enough room to nudge up against the quaint stone walls lining the road as cars passed. Yes, there was space, but what The Heritage Trust employee failed to mention was that these lovely lanes were also lined with brambles for the majority of the route. So, any time the not-so-infrequent car passed down the road, the wayward pedestrian would have to jump into the brambles to avoid being sideswiped. For a better picture, observe:

It probably goes without saying that this little soft-shoe got old fast, and I even alarmed this cow who looked quite taken aback at the humanoid leaping into brambles next to its wall. It didn’t even offer me tea.

Before the downpour commenced, I managed to snap these photographs of Beatrix Potter’s countryside, which is lovely but much more treacherous than her books imply.

Also, I learned something new. Sheep baaaaaah incessantly during a rainstorm – the sound reminded me more of “Silence of the Lambs” than “Peter Rabbit.”

Hill Top, which is reminiscent of the claustrophobic Dove Cottage, might normally amuse with its miniaturized Peter Rabbit ephemera, but I was a bit too soggy to appreciate the artist's homestead. Dark and over-decorated are the descriptions that come to mind...Potter was quite clearly an "outdoorsy" rather than an "indoorsy" type. That said, I learned even more about Potter's remarkable work as a conservationist; without Beatrix Potter, the Lake District in all its majesty simply wouldn't exist: (http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/beatrix-potter-conservationist/1). Her contributions to preserving the English countryside for future generations (including ill-equipped if enthusiastic wanderers like me) are staggering. Moreover, Hill Top's garden is a sight to behold.

No doubt countless rabbits had to be reproved and reformed to achieve its flowery perfection.