Location:

The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region
in North West England. It is a popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes,
forests and mountains. All the land in England higher than 914 m above sea level lies
within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. It also
contains the deepest and longest bodies of water in England, Wast Water and Windermere.

The Lake District

The Lake District National Park was established in 1951 and covers an area of 2,362
square kilometres.

The area was designated a national park on 9 May 1951.It retained its original
boundaries until 2016 when it was extended by 3% in the direction of the Yorkshire
Dales National Park to incorporate areas such as land of high landscape value in
the Lune Valley.

It is the most visited national park in the United Kingdom with 15.8 million annual visitors
and more than 23 million annual day visits, the largest of the thirteen national parks
in England and Wales, and the second largest in the UK after the Cairngorms National
Park. Its aim is to protect the landscape by restricting unwelcome change by industry or
commerce. Most of the land in the park is in private ownership, with about 55%
registered as agricultural land.

The Lake District is also home to a great variety of wildlife, due to its range of varied
topography, lakes and forests. It provides a home for the red squirrel and colonies
of sundew and butterwort, two of the few carnivorous plants native to Britain. The Lake
District is a major sanctuary for the red squirrel and has the largest population in
England (out of the estimated 140,000 red squirrels in the United Kingdom, compared
with about 2.5 million grey squirrels).
There are also lots of birds like the red kie, raven,buzzard and peregrine falcon.
The three writers inspired by the beauty of the Lake District

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

- the most famous of the group who became known as the “Lake Poets”,
Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, just north of the borders of what would
eventually become the Lake District national park

- Wordsworth treasured the unspoiled beauty of the area and opposed what he saw as the
threat of change, whether from the planting of trees in regimented lines, the building of new
homes for industrialists or the coming of the railways. Ironically, it was his own work,
a Guide Through the District of the Lakes, published in 1820, which served as a catalyst for
mass tourism to the area.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Another of the Lake Poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a close friend of Wordsworth.
He followed him to the Lakes, moving into Greta Hall in Keswick in 1800, and frequently
made the trip to Grasmere to visit him.

Plagued with ill health and an addiction to opium, Coleridge left the Lake District in
1804, leaving his home and family in the care of the third of the Lake Poets, Robert
Southey. Today, Greta Hall offers bed and breakfast and self-catering accommodation
to visitors wanting to spend a night beneath its roof.

Robert Southey (1774-1843)

A college mate of Coleridge as well as his brother-in-law, Southey was a celebrated
prose writer and poet.
In 1803, after visiting Coleridge in the Lake District, he decided to stay, awed by
Coleridge and Wordsworth and stunned by the beauty of the countryside. He came to
see the Lake District as the symbol of the nation’s covenant with God, thanking Him that
he was born an Englishman.