The Lake District: Part 1

We got on the bus bright and early Thursday morning, bid farewell to Scotland with bagpipe music playing on the bus, and drove about three hours over to The Lake District. First stop: Dove Cottage, home of William Wordsworth for a few years, in the town of Grasmere. We took a tour through the little house, and it was surprisingly really dark and tiny, although it was quite an expensive house at the time. Wordsworth paid the money to live there so that he might be out in nature to help him write his poetry. One such poem, that is pretty famous, is "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (written in the early 1800s):

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 be gay,

in such a jocund company:

I gazed- and gazed- but little thought

what wealth the show to me had brought:

For of, 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.

So, I didn't see any daffodils, but I saw the "vales and hills", I sat "beside the lake" and "beneath the trees" in the "bliss of solitude" and saw the "couch" on which he lied.  For heaven's sake, if I lived in the beauty of the Lake District, I feel that I could be a poet too.  It was beautiful, and I was so busy soaking everything in that I forgot to take pictures, except for Wordsworth's house (I'll just have to steal some from my friends).

Dove Cottage

Another plus at Grasmere was their famous home-made ginger bread.  SOO good. 

We hopped back on the bus and drove a few miles down to Ambleside, another town in the Lake District where we stayed at a hostel.  First thing we did after checking in was change into our swimsuits and jump into the extremely freezing freezing lake.  I was probably in for 3 minutes tops.  After, I read on the grass by the lake, ate dinner, and then me and some friends walked into town.  My friend David's last name is "Lake", so of course he was thoroughly enjoying the "Lake" District, with all of the Lake roads and signs.

"Lake" Lovers... of course we had to get a picture (Megan, David, and Me)

After our walk into town, we spent some more time just laying on the grass outside next to the lake and soaking in the beauty.  What a wonderful day.