At St. Oswald Church in Grasmere Are The Wordsworth Graves: Just as Stratford-upon-Avon is Shakespeare country, Grasmere and the Lake District is Wordsworth country. Born in the Lake District in 1770, William Wordsworth described the area as ‘the loveliest spot that man hath ever found'. A lover of nature, and inspired by the beauty of the Vale of Grasmere, he spent much of his life in the area walking and writing some of his finest poetry. On our Grasmere stop, we visited St. Oswald's … [Read more...]
Grasmere, Wordsworth and the Lake District – Part 3
September 23, 2010 by
We were in the Lake District on the Coast to Coast Walk across England, a 307 km journey. We were visiting Dove Cottage, one of Wordworth's home. Read on: Around this time the five Wordsworth children were born in the Lake District and the second eldest, William was to leave an indelible mark on English poetry. The middle three children, William, Dorothy and John were to maintain a close family bond throughout their lives. In 1789 the hated Bastille prison in Paris was stormed and the French … [Read more...]
Coast to Coast Walk – Nine Standards
November 6, 2009 by
We were on the Coast to Coast Walk and had just left Kirkby Stephen. Occasionally, we glimpsed a group of tall cairns known as the Nine Standards. No-one really knows who built them or for what reason, but one story is that they were placed on this Pennine ridge to give the marauding Scots the impression that here were able folk, always ready to defend their lands from unwelcome interlopers. Another theory held that the cairns were associated with the Norse usage of the numeral nine, which was … [Read more...]
