Saturday, July 11, 2015

Day 17 - Dove Cottage & Lake District


The weather was not suitable for cruising when we awoke the next morning. It was misting while we ate breakfast and was still misting when we decided to venture into Grasmere to visit William Wordsworth's home Dove Cottage. The drive there took us through Ambleside which still did not look open as we drove through.


Dove Cottage was the home to poet William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and eventually his wife Mary and her sister. We parked, bought tickets, and joined the tour group inside. Our tour guide was a skinny, young man who was very non committal and blase. He had no script that he had memorized, and I wondered as we went from room to room if he had started work there that day. We all crammed into the first room of the house and our guide closed the door behind us where he then began to tell us about the room.



It was a room that I would have considered a living room, but was instead a bedroom first used by Dorothy and then later I think by William and his wife. Our guide, whose name escapes me, would tell us some information and then pause for a long period of time in uncomfortable silence as if we should all be taking notes (which obviously I should have been to translate for this blog) for a test at the end. Then he would point at something, like the wash basin above, and tell us about it (the oldest double wash basin in the UK and most likely a wedding gift). He would look around the room as if searching for an object and when he spied it he would tell us its history. It was a very odd tour, but quite informative.


The cottage has retained many items from Wordsworth's estate and it was an interesting peek into that time period. The house was built in the 17th century and was originally an inn. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy rented the house and lived there from 1799 to 1802 when William married Mary. She and her sister came to live with William and Dorothy in Dove Cottage. After the birth of three children, the family moved out in 1808 in search of bigger accommodations. Wordsworth wrote many of his poems while at Dove Cottage. His study upstairs overlooked all of Grasmere at the time and he was able to watch the comings and goings of the town and its people.


We walked from room to room and our guide did his explanation of items in the room and discussed the room itself; the kitchen for cooking, the parlor for eating and gathering, the buttery for kitchen tasks. Each room we entered the guide would close the door behind us and we would exit through another door into the next room. The rooms were very small, but we were able to take as many pictures as we wanted and we could look up close at everything. Nothing was behind ropes, but we were not to touch anything and really old items were behind glass.


We climbed upstairs, past a very old grandfather clock that was still working, to view the upstairs rooms consisting of William's study, Dorothy's bedroom, the guest bedroom, and a tiny room off of the guest bedroom which eventually became the children's room. It was covered in newspapers from that era. Mary had done this for insulation and reading some of the news was exciting in itself. I wondered how the guests enjoyed having the children right off of that room, but our guide didn't mention that at all. The Wordsworth had many visitors over the years including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas de Quincy.

Apparently Dorothy and her brother were very attached to one another. I had read in the guide book that she wasn't too keen on his marriage and that she herself never married. She was a historian in a way, keeping journals of her life with her brother, and I came to the conclusion that she was most likely the true author but gave everything over to brother as women weren't anything back then.

After the tour of the cottage we went next door to the museum. It is one of the greatest collections of books, paintings, and manuscripts of the Romantic period. Dorothy's journal, which eventually was published as the Grasmere Journal, is on display here and reading it and then some of Wordsworth's poems made me even more convinced that she and her brother worked side by side. Especially her description of daffodils that she and Wordsworth saw while vising another town. Uh huh. Later became Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud. Eventually as I went through the museum I did read that Wordsworth often took his sister's written thoughts and used them for his poems. I'm still not convinced she wasn't the true poet.

Before leaving the cottage we were taken out back to the garden. The garden was Dorothy and Wordsworth's greatest pride and joy. It was here that they often worked side by side planting and weeding and enjoying walks and thoughtful gatherings. Our guide left us here, shutting the door to the cottage, so that we had to exit around the side of the cottage to get to the museum.




From the garden we could look out past the house and imagine seeing the entire town of Grasmere as the Wordsworth's must have done. It was quite the view despite the houses and trees that now block the view of the town and despite the cloudy day. The garden is kept like it was back in the day and at the top of the hill was an area to sit and ponder or even write. A book inside plastic is available for jottings. Uh huh. Perhaps the Dove Cottage Trust needs some financial help? I did not give up any of my own poetry to the book encased in plastic although Madison spent considerable time up there.




It was a really great tour. I have explored quite a few poets and authors homes over the years, but this one ranks at the top. The fact that the home still has its original slate flooring and stone walls and is still set up as it was back in the day gives insight to that period. I liked that we could actually walk into rooms instead of peering over velvet ropes and take pictures. The garden was a huge plus. We were allowed to wander it as long as we wanted and we took quite a bit of time doing so. I loved all the gardens and flowers in the three countries that we visited. So rich and colorful.

 







We had lunch in the little tea room next to the cottage and then we got into the car to drive to the north Lake District. The tour book recommended this as a better place to stay as it was not as full of tourists as where we were currently staying. The drive was beautiful as always.





We pulled over at Lake Thirlmere and got out to walk the path there. It was windy and chilly, but not raining and it was very beautiful. Grandma nixed joining us for the walk and headed back to the car. It was locked so she made friends with another couple parked there and took refuge on the other side of their car that blocked the wind. Grandma was always meeting interesting people.







Lake Thirlmere is a reservoir which contains 11 percent of the North West's water supply. It is an area that many people visit yearly for its native wildlife and its rock climbing crags. We eventually turned around and headed back to the car because we knew the trail might take us hours to complete. We found Grandma huddled in between our car and the couple's car. We also found this sign and were thankful it hadn't been a hot day where Darcy and Madison would have wanted to wade into the lake.


Note to self: Read all signs before heading off down trails. We were going to explore Beatrice Potter's house, but time was running out and so we headed back to our lake area. I purchased my teapots at the little shop I had been in the day before and we walked around the town some more looking at the tourist shops. Eventually we found a pub and had dinner and then went back into our hotel lounge for more cards and cappuccinos to end the day.



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