Romancing the Lakes

There’s something about the Lake District – something that sparks the imagination and soothes the soul. A picture-perfect expanse of rugged peaks, placid waters and rolling farmland, neatly divided by dry-stone walls and dotted with stone-built villages, north-west England’s Lake District has the double accolade of being both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Park. Walkers wax lyrical about its famous fells (as the hills and mountains are called here), but it’s just as rewarding to explore it in a more leisurely way – perhaps following the trail of two literary lights who found inspiration here a century apart.

One of the area’s most famous devotees was Beatrix Potter, the much-loved children’s author who escaped the constraints of Kensington and found peace in a cottage above Windermere. A century earlier, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth spent his most prolific years in Grasmere. The lakes of Windermere and Grasmere are just three miles from each other, connected by regular buses,