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• Spa Hotels In Windermere The Lake District
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• Hot Tub Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
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• Windermere In The Rain
• One Way Ticket To Windermere Por Favor
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The Wordsworth family Lake District

Wordsworth's 1802 poem 'The Sailor's Mother' describes a woman met by the gate on 'A foggy day in winter time'; she was begging and carried under her cloak a songbird in a cage, cherished because it had been her dead son's pet. His 1828 poem 'The Wishing Gate' sees the gate as a symbol of human aspirations. In 1841, hearing, incorrectly, that the gate had been removed, he responded with a second poem, 'The Wishing Gate Destroyed'. Happily the gate (or a much renewed later version of it) is still there to offer its 'balm of expectation' to the passerby.

At the highest point of the road note the drive entrance to Ladywood, a house built by Ernest De Selin court (1870-1943), editor of the standard edition of Wordsworth's poems. Just after the Lady wood driveway, on s side of road is a small car park in a disused quarry. Take path around upper edge of quarry and go due s through gap in wall.100 yds s of the wall is the outcrop of rock described in Wordsworth's 1845 poem 'Forth from a jutting ridge, around whose base'. The poem tells of the 'two heath clad Rocks' in the wood, and of how Up led with mutual help.

To one or other brow of those twin Peaks Were two adventurous Sisters wont to climb, And took no note of the hour while thence they gazed, The blooming heath their couch, gazed, side by side, In speechless admiration. The sisters were Mary and Sara Hutchinson. The 'twin Peaks' look down on to the A591 road some fifty feet below. They make pleasant perches, and though the view is now restricted by tree growth, in winter Rydal Water can be seen from the E rock.

Return to the road and follow it down to the Glow Worm Rock, the overhanging outcrop of rock on the L (N) side of the road l00 yds before it joins the A591 at the White Moss car park. Several of Wordsworth's poems mention the rock, in particular 'The Tuft of Primroses' (1808) and 'The Primrose of the Rock' (1831). He explained 'We have been in the habit of calling it the glowworm rock from the number of glowworms we have often seen hanging on it as described. The tuft of primrose has, I fear, been washed away by the heavy rains.' Walking past the rock on April 24 1802 ('a very wet day') William,

Dorothy and Coleridge

all stopped to look at the Glowworm Rock a primrose that grew there, and just looked out on the road from its own sheltered bower. The clouds moved, as William observed, in one regular body like a multitude in motion a sky all clouds over, not one cloud. The moment seems to have been the origin of 'The Tuft of Primroses', in which Wordsworth addresses the flowers and hopes that they will be safe not only from sheep, goats and children, but from greedy adults who might pick them.

'The Pilgrim's Dream, or, The Star and the Glowworm' (1818) was also 'suggested ... on the road between Rydal and Grasmere, where Glowworms abound', when Wordsworth noticed 'a star ... shining above the ridge of Loughrigg Fell, just opposite'. And 'Inscribed upon a Rock' (1818) describes a 'monument of ice', formed apparently on the same 'dripping rock' by water running down its face. Primroses and glow worms have gone from the rock; the stream of water is still there.

The Upper Path to Rydal Walk

The Upper Path, White Moss Common and Nab Scar For Wordsworth's 'Upper path' to Rydal, walk uphill past Dove Cottage and at How Top take the road E (signed 'Path to Rydal') to reach White Moss Tarn, much frequented by herons. The encounter with the leech gatherer described in 'Resolution and Independence' perhaps took place here: Dorothy's journal (3 October 1800) describes meeting the old man, bent 'almost double', near Dove Cottage; the 'pool bare to the eye of heaven' suggests White Moss Tarn (not then overhung by rhododendrons), though the landscape of the poem is a composite one.

Paths lead upward from the tarn to White Moss Common, an attractive miniature fell with several small peaks offering fine views over the Grasmere and Rydal Valleys (West, calling it 'Grasmere Hill', advised visitors in 1778 to climb the Common to 'have a view of as sweet a scene as travelled eye ever beheld', for 'Mr Gray's description of this peaceful happy vale, will raise a wish in every reader to see so primeval a place'). In Dorothy Wordsworth's words, White Moss is a place made for all kinds of beautiful works of art and nature, woods and valleys, fairy valleys and fairy tarns, miniature mountains, alps above alps.

Having walked up here at twilight on February 8 1802, she wrote There was a strange mountain lightness, when we were at the top of the White Moss. I have often observed it there in the evenings, being between the two valleys. There is more of the sky there than any other place. It has a strange effect sometimes along with the obscurity of evening or night. It seems almost like a peculiar sort of light.

From White Moss Tarn take the upper path heading NE (not the one sloping steeply downhill SE). This is the bridleway between Grasmere and Rydal which was always a favorite walk of Wordsworth's. Since for fifty years he lived at one end of it or the other he was a frequent presence on it; many of his poems were first thought of or actually composed on the path and it has a good claim to being viewed as one of the essential locations of his genius. A few poems were inspired by particular details on the path. Y'4m E of White Moss Tarn is a pair of cottages called Brockstone. Wordsworth's 'The Waterfall and the Eglantine' was suggested in 1800 by an eglantine or sweet briar rose growing on the small stream that comes out under the cottages (which were not then built), just below the path.

Continue 114m to a point where the path passes through an area of old woodland between two wooden gates. 100yds above the path is a massive outcrop of rock one of whose overhanging blocks suggested 'The Oak and the Broom', which tells of two plants growing from 'a crag, a lofty stone I As ever tempest beat'. Hest Bank Ambleside St John's in the Vale Also conceived on the path somewhere between this point and Rydal Mount was 'To the Clouds' (1808). 'The clouds,' wrote Wordsworth, 'were driving over the top of Nab Scar across the vale; they set my thoughts ageing, and the rest followed almost immediately.' The poem addresses the Army of clouds .

Ascending from behind the motionless brow Of that tall rock, as from a hidden world the 'tall rock' being Nab Scar, the crag under which runs the E half of the path itself A little hoary line and faintly traced, Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd's foot Or of his flock? joint vestige of them both.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth in the Lake District

William and Dorothy Wordsworth walked here below the Scar with Coleridge on April 23 1802. 'It was very grand when we looked up,' wrote Dorothy, 'very stony, here and there a budding tree.' She and Coleridge 'left William sitting on the stones, feasting with silence' and pushed on before, scrambling up to 'a rock seat a couch it might be under the bower of William's eglantine, Andrew's broom.' William saw them from below; 'He came to us, and repeated his poems ['The Waterfall and the Eglantine' and 'The Oak and the Broom'] while we sate beside him on the ground.'

Coleridge 'went to search for something new' and found a bower the sweetest that was ever seen. The rock on one side is very high, and all covered with ivy, which hung loosely about, ... on the other side it was higher than my head. We looked down upon the Ambleside vale, that seemed to wind away from us, the village lying under the hill. The fir tree island was reflected beautifully. We now first saw that the trees are planted in rows. About this bower there is mountain ash, common ash, yew tree, ivy, holly, hawthorn, mosses, and flowers, and a carpet of moss.

The 'bower' seems to be mentioned in passing as the 'wild cave' of Wordsworth's 1817 poem 'To the Same Many people have tried to find Coleridge's bower; so far all have failed. Continue 314m to a small metal gate into the garden of Rydal Mount. About 10 yds w of the gate is a small spring which runs under the path into a rectangular stone trough, fringed with ferns. This is what remains of the Nab Well, the spring that supplied Rydal Mount with drinking water. Its water still appears drinkable. Wordsworth's 'Composed when a Probability existed of our being obliged to quit Rydal Mount as a Residence' (1825) thanks the 'pellucid Spring' for cheering a simple board With beverage pure as ever fixed the choice Of Hermit, dubious where to scoop his cell;

and hopes that after his departure the spring will keep its 'Chaplet of fresh flowers and fern'.Pearson's Boathouse, Bainriggs, Grasmere Lake, Grasmere Tale Opposite the Dove Cottage car park is the Prince of Wales Hotel. Just s of the hotel is a stone boathouse with the inscription WP 1843. It was originally built in the early 1800s by William Pearson, one of Wordsworth's schoolfellows at Hawkshead, who became an eminent mathematician. It was very ugly and a great cause of irritation to Wordsworth, who valued the solitude of this part of the shore 'not 200 yards' from Dove Cottage. It fell down several times and was at last rebuilt in its present form, having grown less uncouth as time went by like its owner, Wordsworth remarked. Perhaps in revenge, Wordsworth refers to Pearson as the man whose grave is dug ready for him in The Excursion Book VI. The E shore of the lake hereabouts is described in a poem of 1800:

A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags, A rude and natural causeway, interposed Between the water and a winding slope Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy. The poem tells of how Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge strolled here in harvest time and were surprised to see, on 'a point of jutting land', a man 'in peasant's garb' fishing instead of helping to get in the harvest. The walkers judged him 'Improvident and reckless' for neglecting his work until, drawing nearer, they found him to be 'worn down By sickness'. Struck with 'self reproach' for their hasty moralising, they named the foreshore Point Rash Judgment. Now that the lake's level is lower, the 'point' cannot be identified.

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