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SUNDAY, JULY 4, 2010
PHOTOS BY SIMON AKAM
Clockwise from top left, the Low Wood Hotel was “a pleasant halting-place” on the shore of Lake Windermere in Wordsworth’s time; a sign on Walna Scar points the way to Coniston from Duddon Valley, the same route the poet recommended in 1810; Rydal Mount was Wordsworth’s longtime home, and the gardens have been kept as he designed them; mortarless and moss-covered dry-stone walls mark off Langdale Valley.
Isn’t it romantic? A poet’s-eye view of the Lake District lake continued from F1
I clambered across the upper reaches of the River Derwent and scrambled up a steep bank. But when I reached the trees, it be- came clear that I had greatly underestimated the staying pow- er of Taxus baccata. A neat plaque informed me that although one of the original four conifers had fall- en in a storm in the 19th century, the survivors are now about 1,500 years old. I realized then that for this
“small gloomy grove,” at least, two centuries is hardly any time at all. Could the same be said of the
rest of England’s Lake District? This year marks the 200th anni- versary of the first publication of the romantic poet William Wordsworth’s guide to the region. Born in Cockermouth, on the fringe of the area, in 1770, Words- worth lived in Lakeland for much of his life, and the country in- spired perhaps his most cel- ebrated verse. He wrote, of course, in a time when the sort of fatal shooting rampage that scarred the region’s western reaches last week was unheard of. But such intrusions of modernity are rare. As I found on a recent visit with the poet’s guide in
hand, much of the Lake District that Wordsworth knew is still in- tact.
Before I could make the trip, I had to obtain the guide itself. This proved to be a considerable undertaking. There are modern editions in print, but they’re of the expanded fifth edition of 1835. I needed the original 1810 text, written as an anonymous in- troduction to a volume of Lake- land engravings by a provincial cleric, the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson. Wilkinson’s book is now ex- tremely rare, and I spent some
SAIL INTO SAVINGS.
time fruitlessly pursuing it. Even- tually, though, I discovered that the great Bodleian Library at Ox- ford University, where I’d studied as an undergraduate, had a copy, and I was able to arrange for the specialist reprographic staff to make a series of scans for me. As I waited for this electronic version to arrive, further research revealed the guide’s curious ges- tation. It transpired that Words- worth — who in 1810 was 40, with a brood of young children — was in fact underwhelmed by Wilkin- son’s engravings. In a letter dated May 10, 1810, he quipped that “they will please many who in all the arts are most taken with what is worthless.” Given these senti- ments, it appears that financial considerations may have played a role in the poet’s acceptance of the commission. Potboiler or not, when I finally obtained the text, I found an ex- traordinary document. Words- worth describes the history and physical nature of the landscape and ranges far and wide on sub- jects from planting to architec- ture. The guide is also studded with extracts from the poet’s verse, such as these lines that in- terrupt the description of tarns, or small mountain lakes. “There sometimes doth a leap-
ing fish chear; croak
Send through the tarn a lonely The crags repeat the raven’s
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In symphony austere:” However, despite the fact that he is essentially writing a prose advertisement for the Lake Dis- trict (much of it now a national park), Wordsworth’s attitude to the increasing influx of visitors is curmudgeonly. “This beautiful country has, in a great variety of instances, suffered from a spirit of tasteless and capricious in- novation,” he laments. The guide includes a suggested
tour, so planning my route was straightforward. My point of de- parture was Coniston, a village of
0 Whitehaven 0 MILES Great Gable District Lake
Irish Sea
Coniston LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST
gray stone that lies just beyond the head of Coniston Water, the third-largest lake in the district.
As a first excursion, Words-
worth recommends a trip over the mountains to the neighboring Duddon Valley. The morning af- ter my arrival in Coniston, I set out on this trek. The guide warns that “the road is so long and steep that the Traveller will be obliged to lead his horse a considerable part of it.” Two hundred years on, Walna Scar, as the route is known, is still an unpaved road, a track that rises up out of Coniston and across moorland to the west of the lake to a breach in the ridge- line. So I set out on foot. The Lake District weather re- mains as changeable today as it was when Wordsworth wrote that “the country labours under the ill repute of being scarcely ever free
on
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Water world For more photos of England’s Lake District,
visit
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from rain,” and as I walked up Walna Scar, visibility deteriorat- ed. At the summit of the pass, the guide promises that “nothing can be found more beautiful” than the view to the west. But mist ob- scured this vista. Fortunately, as I descended, I left the cloud behind and found, 200 years later, that the Duddon Valley is still very beautiful, a cleft running into the heart of the Lake District from the Irish Sea, crisscrossed with dry-stone walls. Built without mortar and often overgrown with moss, these structures are a ubiq- uitous feature of the Lake District landscape. I was traveling in May — the season Wordsworth recom- mended — and the fields were also full of young lambs, tiny, un- sure woolly creatures on wobbly legs, following their shaggy moth- ers and bleating plaintively and experimentally. I followed the Duddon Valley to its terminus and came to the town of Broughton-in-Furness. Then, following Wordsworth’s recommendation, I returned the nine miles to Coniston by road, although I availed myself of a taxicab in the absence of horse- drawn transportation. The next day, I continued to fol- low the guide’s instructions, walking north from Coniston through the pastures of Yewdale to the neighbouring valley of Til- berthwaite. Here, as Wordsworth suggested, at the “furthest of two Cottages,” I asked “the way
Windermere
Atlantic Ocean
FRANCE Paris
Rydal Mount
Keswick 10
MILES
BRITAIN Detail
IRELAND London
North Sea
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