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Off-season in the Lake District

Come in May and avoid the crowds, but beware of the weather

Many of the single-track roads of Cumbria were built in the first century, during the Roman occupation of Britain. They were designed to accommodate foot soldiers – not vehicles. Some, like the road to Hardknott Pass, have since been paved and, as a concession to changing modes of travel, occasional pullouts where two vehicles can pass have been added. Not much else has changed.

Alan and Pat, a couple of our native UK friends, were showing us around the Lake District of northwestern England and, despite a freak snowstorm two days earlier that dashed our plans to go hiking, Alan was determined we should at least see the high country. The four of us piled into a rented Austin and set out from Ambleside for Hardknott Castle.

Where Alan turned off the main road a sign warned of steep (1 in 3) grades ahead and I wondered how our little Austin would fare in the snow. Negotiating the narrow single-track roads is a matter of timing and luck. The trick is to meet oncoming traffic where one car or the other can duck into a pullout. But just below Hardknott Pass, on the steepest part of the road, our luck nearly ran out. Labouring in low gear our Austin, barely able to handle the grade, was crawling upward when a car appeared above us. Headlights flashing wildly it was coming much too fast. Its frightened driver had probably been riding his brakes until they overheated and faded. Alan barely made it to a pullout in time to let the runaway car flash past and disappear around a corner below us. Whew!

When we tried to get started again the tires spun out on the steep wet pavement and left us sitting in a cloud of acrid rubber fumes. A push from three of us got the Austin rolling and we chased it up to a relatively flat spot where Alan stopped and let us back in. To my amazement, we eventually made it to Hardknott Castle, where patches of snow still lingered on the lee side of rock walls. The mountains above us were completely white.

The "Castle" turned out to be little more than a few rectangles of crudely fitted stones, foundation rocks that were too big to be carted away by local scroungers. It takes some imagination to visualize the ruins as they were when this was a command post on the northern frontier of the vast Roman empire. But the reason for building here is obvious. Situated on a rocky crag near the top of Hardknott Pass the location provides sweeping views across the upper Eskdale valley to the Isle of Man. To the north Sca Fell, the highest mountain in England, rises to a 3,162 foot summit ridge and Harter Fell, only slightly lower, provides a massive natural barrier on the south. But it must have been a miserable place to live. We hiked up to a rocky spur above the ruins but the cold, biting wind off the North Atlantic sent us shivering back to the car and winding our way back down to the comforts of Ambleside.

Even though our hopes of an early-season ridge walk were dashed by the weather it's easy to see why Lake District National Park, which includes most of central Cumbria, has become a walker's mecca. Its wild, rugged mountains, deep valleys, and glistening lakes draw nature-lovers from across England to its vast network of trails – ridge hikes, valley walks, and lakeside strolls. There are trails for everyone and the Lake District is one of the only areas in England where it is still possible to get far enough away from civilization to experience a sense of wilderness. But, according to Alan, it's difficult during the summer to get very far from other walkers.

Although it's tucked into the extreme northwestern corner of the country the Lake District is easily accessible from anywhere in England and Scotland, although the Scots, who have their own lakes and mountains, may be less inclined to join the hoards of English tourists who flock to the area each summer. During high season the Lake District has a reputation for being a tourist zoo.

Not everyone comes to hike. The region also attracts thousands of poetry pilgrims who are content to visit the shrines of the "Lake Poets" and experience the joys of walking through the words of England's great romantic poets. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and de Quincey, all lived in the Lake District and much of their work was inspired by the wonders of nature around them. As pioneers in the Romantic Movement of the 19th century, they were among the first to promote walking for pleasure. In a tribute to his friend, de Quincey estimated that Wordsworth's scrawny legs had done at least 175,000 miles in the Lake District. Coleridge was no couch-potato either. During a 100 mile walk in 1802 he threw in an early, if not a first, ascent of Scafell Pike.

I started reading Wordsworth's poetry seriously when I was about 12. I was forced to. After wasting most of my morning staring out the window, wishing I was outside riding my horse or in the hayfield potting at gophers with my brand new .22 I was confronted by Miss MacNamee. The no-nonsense teacher who presided over our one-room school sat me down in a windowless corner and said "memorize this." The sappy poem about some old English dude who "wander'd lonely as a cloud" until he found "a host, of golden daffodils" seemed utterly irrelevant to me at the time. I doubt that the poet, even now, has much of a fan club among 12-year-old ranch kids. But one mellows. I still remember parts of the poem. And over the years I have come to concede that Wordsworth was indeed a great writer, and perhaps Miss MacNamee actually knew what she was doing as a teacher. But I digress.

Alan, who is something of a renaissance scholar, decided we could fill in the rest of the day doing the "poetry circuit." Purists would have started in the small town of Cockermouth in the northwestern Lake District where Wordsworth was born in 1770. But that would mean a long drive so we opted to begin our tour with a visit to Hawkshead. This tidy picturesque village, only a few kilometres south of Ambleside, is where Wordsworth attended school as a child. The faithfully preserved Grammar School, austere and formal, is set up just as it might have been when young William sat furtively carving his name into the top of his desk. He was probably about the same age as I was when I sat in a corner memorizing his poem – just another bored kid wishing he was somewhere else. He probably got the strap for defacing school property but today his jackknife artistry is proudly displayed in memory of the kid who grew up to become Poet Laureate of England.

From Hawkshead it's only a short drive to Dove Cottage on the outskirts of Grasmere. Located on the tranquil waters of a small lake, the cottage was once a pub – "the Dove and Olive Branch" – whose uneven plank floors and dark wood-panelled walls have not been changed. Wordsworth stumbled across it in 1799 while on a walking tour with Samual Coleridge. He fell in love with the place, moved in with his sister Dorothy, and spent the next three years living there and writing many of his greatest poems.

We had the place to ourselves in May but during high season tourists line up to tour the cottage, pour over original manuscripts and letters in the nearby Wordsworth Museum, or ramble around the countless walks leading from Grasmere into the hills that inspired much of Wordsworth's work.

In 1802, at the age of 32, Wordsworth married. Dove Cottage, no longer large enough to accommodate his growing fame and family, became a pad for Wordsworth's opium-addicted buddy De Quincy. Wordsworth, his new wife Mary, and sister Dorothy, moved to nearby Rydal Mount – less than a mile from Dove Cottage but well beyond the drift of second-hand smoke. The old 16th century farmhouse where Wordsworth lived until his death in 1850 is owned by one of his descendants who ensures that the house and surrounding gardens are faithfully maintained true to the poet's original design.

After a tour of the big family home at Rydal Mount we walked to Dora's Field where a "host of golden daffodils" has been planted in memory of Wordsworth's daughter. Wordsworth, his wife Mary, and sister Dorothy are buried in nearby St. Oswald's churchyard. I can't help thinking the great poet must turn in his grave as hoards of tourists tromp past his final resting place. During his life Wordsworth not only revered and wrote about the natural beauty of the Lake District, he campaigned fiercely against anything that would bring commercial development to the area. Ironically, even in death, he and his work now draw countless thousands of visitors each summer to the hills where he once "wander'd lonely as a cloud".