WORDSWORTH’S LAKE DISTRICT
Standing on the elevated path of Loughrigg Terrace, gazing down on Grasmere’s glistening waters, it is easy to appreciate why this beautiful scene became one of the most inspiring locations in English poetry.
As a young boy, William Wordsworth first encountered this extraordinary view while exploring the hills near his school in Hawkshead. The sight stopped him in his tracks, his eyes alighting on the valley’s crags and woody steeps, its church and stone cottages, and of course its lake, with its “one green Island and… winding shores”. “What happy fortune were it here to live,” he exclaimed; a wish echoed ever since by many who have stood and stared in the same spot.
Wordsworth nurtured this gleaming vision of , in the heart of the Lake District, as a treasured memory for two decades before he at last settled into Dove Cottage on the village’s outskirts in 1799, with his sister Dorothy. There he embarked
