In England, there are no national holidays like at home in Hungary, or in France, Germany. Apart from the Christmas-New Year’s-Easter trio, there are so called bank holidays, which are basically a Monday off. One of them prolongs August’s last weekend to a 3-day weekend. At this time, I like going away to farther places within England. One year ago, I decided to conquer the Lake District (situated ca. 430 km/270 miles from Oxford), about which I had already heard a lot from others, and where the “lake poets”, my favourite English poets lived. Wordsworth, Coleridge and maybe the lesser-known Southey were called like this; they are the most remarkable figures of early romanticism, whose poetry was highly inspired by this fabulous and mysterious scenery, which is exactly like how I would visualise the picture of “romantic wilderness” in front of my inner eye. Neverending landscape, which is decorated by lakes, peaks, forests, springs, waterfalls, and through which winding roads breaking way and leading into the little towns and villages nestled in there.
But how do literature and outing come together? When I visited the national park’s official website to get information about accommodation and events, among the guided walks, I found a really interesting one: “in the footsteps of Wordsworth”. It was said as a ca. 6-km and 5-hour long, relatively easy free guided walk, which departs from Glenridding by taking a steamer boat across the Ullswater lake, then goes up to the legendary Aira Force waterfall, and finally walks back to the starting point. Above all, they had one scheduled for that Saturday; what a coincidence!
I arrived at the meeting point on Saturday by 10.40 am, where 3-4 volunteer guides had been waiting for the interested people. You should imagine very kind leaders, who were probably in their age of retirement and were exceptionally enthusiastic; they even took serious trainings in navigation, first aid, history, nature, literature, etc. in order to be able to lead groups on such walks. They also had to participate in certain number of walks as observers beforehand, so even alone they would know the track and what to talk about where. Apart from them, a literature expert would also have joined from the Wordsworth museum; however, she had an accident, so she couldn’t come at the end. That day, 10-12 of us gathered together, and as it turned out, I was the only one interested in Wordsworth and the literary aspect of the tour, so I got private guidance at some points, I could read the notes of the guides, and the poems or notes by William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy which were selected to certain places of the walk.
So we took the boat across Ullswater, then we headed towards the Aira Force waterfall. And here comes the first literary reference: not only that Wordsworth also liked walking in this area, but he got so mesmerised by the entire valley and the water breaking out from the cliffs and plummeting into the depth in the deep forest, that he even composed a poem about it, called Airey-Force Valley (you can read it here: Airey-Force Valley). Furthermore, there also exists a legend around the waterfall, which comes into life in the poem “The Somnambulist” (read here: The Somnambulist).
The story briefly tells about Lady Emma and Sir Englamore: Emma lived in a hunting lodge always waiting for his fiancé, Sir Englamore, to return from the fight. The long waiting time affected her mind and sleep: she fell into a sleepwalking trance. From night to night, she wandered farther and farther, her heart and her subconscious led her to places where she had spent happy times with the knight. One night, her legs took her to the waterfall, stopping her on the top of it, on the very edge of the ravine. The knight returned home that night, and when he couldn’t find Emma in her bed, he rushed to the Aira Force, where he beheld her standing on the edge of the cliff. Not knowing that she is in sleepwalking trance, he gently touched her shoulder waking Emma up, who then plunged into the torrent by the shock. At the end, the girl died deep down in the arms of her love, and Sir Eglamore lived as a hermit for the rest of his life in a cave next to the waterfall. Well, it’s not really a happy ending, is it….It is not clarified if the legend inspired Wordsworth to write his poem, or the poem gave birth to the legend, I think everyone can decide it for themselves. After we admired the fall from the bottom as well as from the stone bridge, which arches above that point where the stream dives down after dashing forward with all its strength, it was time to continue wandering to other inspiring places.
Actually you can look anywhere and will be affected by such inspirational power, that you would want to grab pen and paper – if you have it on you – and start to write. But if you don’t have it, you still want to let in and lock up every single pixel of the overlapping mountains, the steep cliffs, the mossy trees, the grazing sheep, the calmly rippling water and the smiley people sailing on it, in order to be able to pull them out on a gloomy day and get lost in reverie with them. Wordsworth did so after one of his notable spring walks with his sister, Dorothy. The result was one of his most beautiful and best-known poems, the Daffodils.
“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.”
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Our walk reached lunchtime, which we spent exactly on this magical spot: in the Glencoyne bay, beside the lake, beneath the trees, where the Wordsworths discovered the daffodils. You definitely need imagination to visualise this place crowded with daffodils and covered in golden yellow at the end of August, but I think, there I managed to do so. By all means, it would be worth returning here in spring to see them in reality, and to breathe their scents deep in. Even though there were no daffodils that day, the view on the lake compensated us.
We also need to note here, that Dorothy was a talented writer, too: especially her diary entries became well-known; though, she also wrote poems, she didn’t have ambitions of becoming famous, she rather left it for her brother, William and their friend, Coleridge. However, she made remarkable effect on Wordsworth’s poetry: even the above-mentioned poem about the daffodils was inspired by her journal entry: “When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.”
After lunch, we headed back to Glenridding along the shore, listened to further nice quotes about the lakeside scenery by the poet, fell in never-ending astonishment with the landscape, and finally bid farewell to the group at the starting point. I think I got everything I wanted from this walk: a relatively easy trek through forests, clearings, cliffs, steep stairs, with a splendid waterfall, and last but not least a bit of travel in time to the early 1800s, where we could imagine how one of the biggest English poets and his sister walked on the same paths, among the same trees, admiring the same stunning views as we did 200 years later. So that’s how literature can be linked up with outing.
And if you’re wondering where William Wordsworth recalled his walks in the nature, and jotted the poems with breathtaking, wild, romantic landscapes and the little wonders of nature down, well, exactly here, on his favourite couch:
However, you have to wait until my next post to find out more on Wordsworth’s house, the Dove Cottage in Grasmere along with other interesting and exceptional sights in the Lake District.