Adventures Abroad 1

The Lake District

The county of Cumbria, also known as The Lake District, is an area of great natural beauty which offers an enormous range of attractions including mountain scenery, sixteen lakes and a countless number of very charming villages.

This mountainous region in North West England is often associated with Romanticism, a movement in the arts and literature, during the late 18^th century and early 19^th century, which recognized the importance of emotions and imagination.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) were the first British Romantic poets.

The Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collection of poems by these two poets, is generally considered to have marked the beginning of the Romantic Movement within literature in England.

 The unsurpassed landscape was also an inspiration for the artistic works of many painters.

The English romantic painters John Constable (1776-1837) and William Turner (1775-1852) also painted this area.

Windermere

Constable

Farmhouse by a Lake in the Lake District

Turner

William Wordsworth declared that the Lake District was ‘the loveliest spot that man has ever known’ and John Constable described the Lake as ‘the finest scenery that ever was’.

Windermere is the largest natural lake in England. Grasmere village, near the lake with the same name, is probably one of the Lakes´ most popular villages, thanks to Wordsworth who lived there in a house that is now a museum, Dove Cottage.

Dove Cottage

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

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

.......


William Wordsworth