Everyone goes to the Lake District. It’s been a romantic destination for the English from at least the time of, well, the Romantics. Wordsworth went to grammar school there, and later wrote much of his poetry at a place called Dove Cottage. Through his poems, and also especially through his other writings, he became a major publicist for the area’s charms.
Coleridge (of Rime of the Ancient Mariner fame), also hung out there (with at least one of his opium-taking mates). And Constable became world famous for painting the idyllic landscapes formed by the area’s mirror-like lakes and soft green peaks.
But since this is England, the “wildness” that is the Lake District is a very refined, well-set-up and cared-for one. You can easily get to the centre of the area from anywhere in Britain by train, and there are public buses that run along most of the tiny lanes, taking you to tidy villages in both the hills and along the shores of the lakes.
Even the tourism ventures, such as the boat cruises along Windermere, are restrained, thankfully in keeping with the nature of the place. In so doing, whether by just the way the culture works, or by some very tight planning by-laws, the modern Lake District is still able to give tourists the impression, at least, that it’s similar to the way it was back in the 1800s.
But while in the Lake District you can take buses, trains, ferries and steamboats, it’s best known as a place where you can (to put it not unkindly) “take a hike”. The wonderful English tradition of public walking paths comes to the fore, and you can literally travel by foot to almost any destination, be it village, mountain or lake. In fact, you can even amble to Ambleside!
ooOOoo
These days everyone (and especially the Japanese, it seems) knows of the Lake District from the film Miss Potter, in which Renee Zellweger played Beatrix Potter. Potter fell in love with the Lake District, and after her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, became a best seller, she bought a house there.
As time went on, and she wrote more popular books, she bought up farms that would otherwise have been sold to developers. In the end she bequeathed the whole thing to the National Trust, and they’ve played a major role in preserving the area as a national park.
We were fortunate to camp in the park, along the less developed side of Windermere (locals don’t say “Lake” Windermere, since “mere” means “lake” in Norse). And rather than spend time driving the often very narrow lanes to visit all the famous places, we opted instead to walk along several paths, including one that led to Hawkshead, famous these days for the Beatrix Potter Gallery, situated in her husband’s old law offices.
We were not, it’s important to note, what you would call “trampers”, or even “walkers”, at least in the English sense of the word. The English really dress for their hikes, wearing well-oiled leather boots, and colour-coordinated pants and jackets that look to be totally weather-resistant, and bramble-proof as well.
We, on the other hand, wore jeans, and while I had a passable pair of low-cut tramping shoes, my wife wore her slip-ons. Neither of us had any special rain gear. And worst offence of all, we couldn’t bring ourselves to pay £2.50 for a single-page, photocopied map.
As it turned out, we needn’t have worried, apart from the stares of disbelief we received from most of the properly clothed people we met along the way. The paths were so well marked, so well maintained (often with gravel paths), and so populated, that we would have had to work really hard to get lost (or into any other trouble for that matter).
Most of the work on the walkways (including great signage) is carried out by the resourceful National Trust wardens, who do a wonderful job. But we did come upon at least one improvised trail marker that proved very timely towards the thirsty end of our last route of the day:
And the walking itself was wonderful. Imagine being able to just climb over a stile, or walk through a “kissing gate” (nice, eh!), and go across sheep paddocks, through farm yards, and along creeks running through a forestry block.
We often think of New Zealand as being pretty special, and the Great Walks, as well as our many tracks into the bush, are wonderful. But that country could really learn something from the English when it comes to creating true public access to the countryside.
ooOOoo
Hawkshead was doing pretty well to cope with all the tourists that descend upon it. It’s a very small place, and the streets and houses still maintain their lovely, placid appeal. It’s only in the central square that things get a bit out of hand, at least from what we could see.
Having walked pretty much uphill for about three hours, we decided to have lunch in one of Hawkshead’s pubs. We had just started in on our ciders when a large group of Japanese came our way.
At the head of the group was the guide, who seemed to be talking to herself, since everyone else was strung out well behind her in a very long line. It soon became apparent, however, that they all had earplugs, and they were listening to the guide’s commentary via Bluetooth, since she had been talking into a miniature microphone.
One man was dragging well behind the others, and when he saw us with our drinks he went inside the pub, exiting a few minutes later with a well-filled pint of the establishment’s best bitter.
He took a long sip, and was just heading away into the village, in the opposite direction to the tour group, when his wife came running back, in that mincing way the Japanese do so well.
You didn’t have to know any Japanese phrases to get the gist of the conversation, which ran something along the lines of, “You fool, you can’t walk around an English village with a beer in your hands!”
I, on the other hand, could only fantasize his possible reply – “When you said we were going to visit Potter, I thought you meant Harry Potter!”
ooOOoo
On our way back from Hawkshead, via another wonderful path along a small lake (or “tarn”), we spied a young stag scratching his velvet against a beech tree limb, and it got us to thinking.
We had actually seen very little of what you would call “real” wildlife during our three weeks in England, apart from a dead badger on the road side (looking for all the world like a long-nosed dog wearing a burglar’s mask).
What would Beatrix Potter think? No Missus Tiggy-winkle’s, only a few Squirrel Nutkin’s. Not even a single Samuel Whiskers, gone off the rails, hanging around a back-alley somewhere.
Rabbits, on the other hand, were in plentiful supply. So much so that the term “wild” didn’t seem appropriate. In a nearby field of about one acre in size we saw what might have been Peter Rabbit, but it was hard to say. It was more like an Elvis impersonators’ convention.
I counted at least five times, and the highest number of rabbits I came up with was 38! Clearly, in the Lake District (as you might expect, all things considered), the hunting of rabbits is not a major past-time.
As for Jemima Puddleduck, it wasn’t even a convention, it was a population explosion. And “wild” was also not the term you would ever use for Windermere’s waterfowl inhabitants. They have been so well fed, for so long, by so many tourists, that they’re like part of the furniture.
In fact, on the “other” shore of Windermere, at one of the ferry departure points, white swans have taken to curling up on the concrete walkway along the breakwater, rather than floating about majestically, as one might expect.
Tourists, strolling along the foreshore while waiting for the boat, literally have to walk around them. I never saw a single swan even attempt to get out of the way.
~originally composed in June, 2011~