POTTER's FARM & WORDSWORTH COUNTRY

Oakthorpe Hotel
Lake District, Windemere
CUMBRIA, England, UK

Day 110

Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth are the two English writers i most admire. Well, that is, apart from Dickens, Hardy, Chaucer, Bronte's and others..Ok, there are lots...but as far as the Lake District authors these two would have to be the most colorful. There are others..ie Elizabeth Gaskill lived here too...(she wrote the autobiography of Emily Bronte)..

But Beatrix Potter has been a long time favourite..remembering as a child her Tales of Peter Rabbit and Flopsy Bunnies, Benjamin Rabbit and Mrs Tittlemose! As has Wordsworth (because of his Daffodil poem...'Ten thousand saw i at a glance'..which was written about daffodils in Gold Barrow Park in Oldswater, and not Grasmere, as it turns out!)

And we were privileged to have seen where both lived, and where both wrote...

First was William Wordsworth.

He has a history that unless the 'insider's' tell you about, you'd probably never know. That is according to them anyway. He had a child in France, when he lived there in his youth. And before he came back to the Lake District to wrote about daffodils and other things of beauty...a very renowned poet of his time, and lesser known now, in our time, but no less worthy.

He was born in Grasmere. A village not far from Windemere and considered to be part of Windemere. And he died there, and was subsequently buried there. We saw where he was laid to rest, he and his wife and family.

The plot is next to a church and a daffodil park. My favourite flower....one that Grandpop used to grow and nurture in our garden when we were kids..(there are daffodils still there in Wordsworth's garden that we photographed...

We also saw the Gingerbread Cottage that is next door as well...this was originally a school house where William Wordsworth and his wife Mary used to teach..which became a place where they produced Gingerbread..and still do today...and let me tell you...it IS delicious. We bought some and nibbled it all the way back home that night after we bought it!

Then was Beatrix Potter.

We headed on to Hilltop where Beatrix Potter lived after she moved out from her parents home in London...when she was about 37 i might add. What a gorgeous little English house this is, made more famous by the recent movie called, 'Miss Potter'. (although Hilltop was not used in the movie, a local cafe that was also part of the National Trust was used for the shoot as too many tourists were wanting to go to Hilltop).

At Hilltop, i bought a rabbit, Peter Rabbit. I had been thinking how boring it is to have only Greg and i in all our photos...and that it might be better to have something else to take the attention of us, so this is it...Our own baby...aww...Peter Rabbit!!!!

And no, I'm not going crazy...i was inspired by learning that Beatrix Potter used to put her characters into real settings, in her books, and then publish them...(in her house at Hilltop there are examples of these inanimate objects such as dressing tables, her bed, ornaments etc..and also scenes, in books that are displayed for the public to see)...

And i also remembered Cazza putting Noddy into some of her pictures..and thought...yes, that's what we can do. Put our Peter Rabbit into our pictures, instead of us, boring ourselves, with pictures of us!!

By the way...just wanted to say...we're in an internet cafe down the street from our hostal..and Robbie Williams' song..Sin, Sin, Sin, is blaring out....oh it sounds SO GOOD!

About Beatrix Potter...

She was an amazing lady. She married quite late...in her forties, at about 47 i think it is. And she married a lawyer who worked in Grasmere. She kept Hilltop, her first farm purchase in the Lake District and together with her husband bought anther property to live in after they were married.....

Then, due to her books being so popular and successful, she later bought 14 properties in the area. Mainly because she didn't want other people to buy the propery...and to exploit the area...and partly because she wanted to protect the Lakeland sheep in the area.

When she died, she bequeathed all the properties to the National Trust. Excluding her marital home which she bequeathed to her husband. He later died (only 5 years after her even though he was a bit younger than her) and he also bequeathed that property to the National Trust. They had no children.

The properties are just beautiful. She wanted them all to remain as she left them, but apparently the National Trust has rented out some and gone against her wishes which some are protesting to this day.

We learned so much about this remarkable farming lady.....

But, there was another surprise...

We caught a little boat over the lakes, to John Ruskin, the writer and philosopher's, home..

And that was JUST GORGEOUS.

He was the man who literally invented libraries.

What a wonderful day...

We got back to Windemere in the evening, and decided to venture out..and found a cute litte bar..that served....Roast and Yorkshire pudding...(this time, no gravy for me!)

Our last English meal before Scotland..

PS William Wordsworth's poem

'I wandered lonely as a Cloud' , written in 1807. He later altered it, and his second version, published in 1815, is the one widely known today.

'I wandered lonely as a Cloud' by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils