by Ian | Aug 25, 2022 | Fiction
You may not realise it but Beatrix Potter was the JK Rowling of her day. When she died on 22 December 1943, aged 77, she left £211,636, a value of about £12,600,000 in today’s money. She also bequeathed over 4000 acres of land to the National Trust, worth about...
by Ian | Aug 25, 2022 | Non-Fiction
One should always have a definite objective, in a walk as in life – it is so much more satisfying to reach a target by personal effort than to wander aimlessly. An objective is an ambition, and life without ambition is … well, aimless wandering. A Coast to Coast Walk...
by Ian | Aug 25, 2022 | Poets
Coleridge was inspired and drawn to the Lake District by his friend William Wordsworth, who was born in Cockermouth. Coleridge lived at Greta Hall in Keswick with Robert Southey from 1799 until 1804. During his time there he walked considerable distances and is the...
by Ian | Jul 29, 2022 | Poets
I’m not a poet, but just the fact that I associate Dominic with Bowscale Tarn, therefore Wordsworth, meant I needed to try. I wrote, Thoughts on a Cumbrian Lad at Bowscale (Appendix 1). Wordsworth himself was no stranger to the early death of a child. During his...
by Ian | Jul 29, 2022 | Essays
The Lake District has been a county that attracts poets, painters, writers and homegrown fox hunters that have songs written about them. For example, ‘D’ye Ken John Peel?’ about John Peel, a famous eighteenth-century Cumbrian huntsman. Like Dominic, Peel was from the...
