Lake District

Lake District Travel Guide

"Let nature be your teacher…" Wordsworth's ideal comes true in this region of jagged mountains, waterfalls, wooded valleys, and stone-built villages. The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, and other Englishmen and women of letters, found the Lake District an inspiring setting for their work, and visitors have followed ever since, to walk, go boating, or just relax and take in the views. In 1951 the Lake District National Park was created here from parts of the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire. No mountains in Britain are finer in outline or give a greater impression of majesty; deeper and bluer lakes can be found, but none that fit so readily into the surrounding scene.

Perhaps it's only natural that an area so blessed with beauty should have become linked with so many prominent figures in English literature. It all may have started on April 15, 1802, when William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking in the woods of Gowbarrow Park just above Aira Force, and Dorothy noted in her journal that she had never seen "daffodils so beautiful." Two years later Wordsworth was inspired by his sister's words to write one of the best-known lyric poems in English, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." In turn, other English Romantic poets came to the region and were inspired by its beauty. Besides Wordsworth, literary figures who made their homes in the Lake District include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Robert Southey, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and later, Hugh Walpole, and the children's writers Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter.

The Lake District is a contour map come to life, a stunning natural park beloved by outdoor enthusiasts. It covers an area of approximately 885 square mi and holds 16 major lakes and countless smaller stretches of water. You can cross it by car in about an hour, though that would be a shame. The mountains are not high by international standards -- Scafell Pike, England's highest peak, is only 3,210 feet above sea level -- but they can be tricky to climb. In spring, many of the higher summits remain snowcapped long after the weather below has turned mild.

This area can be one of Britain's most appealing reservoirs of calm, but not in summer. A lakeside town, however appealing, loses its charm when cars and tour buses clog its narrow streets. Similarly, the walks and hiking trails that crisscross the region seem less inviting when you share them with a crowd that churns the grass into a quagmire. In January 2005 storms felled an estimated half-million trees in the national park, an apparent ecological disaster. However, the destruction of areas of coniferous woodland may be an opportunity to re-create more indigenous mixed habitats. Despite the challenges of geography and popularity, the Lake District has managed tourism and the landscape in a manner that retains the character of both the villages and the natural environment.

Off-season visits can be a real treat. All those little inns and bed-and-breakfasts that turn away crowds in summer are eager for business the rest of the year (and their rates drop accordingly). It's not an easy task to avail yourself of a succession of sunny days in the Lake District -- some statisticians allot to it about 250 rainy days a year -- but when the sun breaks through and brightens the surfaces of the lakes, it is an away-from-it-all place to remember.

Photo: Nicholas Peter Gavin Davies/Shutterstock