Dove Cottage and dancing with daffodils…

Friday, March 14, 2025

Well, the mattress has as many lumps and bumps, and ups and downs in it as the floor and ceiling do. Grant has hit his head a few times already. Some people are slow learners. I, however, have no such problems. All these quirks add to the cuteness of the cottage.

Off to Grasmere this morning for a look at Dove Cottage – the house William Wordsworth lived and wrote in for eight years. It was here that, following a walk with his sister (probably at this time of the year), he penned what I refer to as the Daffodil poem:

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 but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, 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.

I’ve always loved this, but after seeing the wild daffodils everywhere, it means so much more. And when Wordsworth said, “Come forth into the light, let nature be your teacher” it was this area he was talking about.

His sister Dorothy wrote her Grasmere Journal here too. There was a copy in the cottage we were staying in that I flipped in and out of. It brought their life at Dove Cottage to, well, life.

The rooms are tiny, and while there was room for him and Dorothy to live here, when friends came to stay (and Wordsworth kept rather illustrious literary company) it must have been ridiculously cramped. And that was before Wordsworth married and brought his wife to live here. We are, I suppose, very spoilt for space.

Grant wasn’t interested in the whole Wordsworth thing, so he amused himself walking around Grasmere while I was in the cottage. More of those low-flying f-number planes came through the valley when I was walking back to join him. I asked in a café what they were – apparently they are F35S and a mix of British air force and NATO planes. Mystery solved.

Lunch was at Utopia, a café in Windermere. Again we had the soup of the day (potato and leek today) and shared a ham sandwich on the side.

Back in Coniston we walked back into the village and down to Coniston Water, calling in at The Coniston Inn for a pint to sustain us for the walk back.

We’d been craving Indian so chose Sara’s Indian in the village. The first indication that it might not have been the smartest choice we’d made came when we couldn’t smell anything from outside. Nothing – which was what the food tasted of. And every dish tasted the same. It was so disappointing.

The stats…

Temperature: 0-7

Miles travelled: about 35 miles*

*Even though we work in kms in Australia, all signage in the UK is in miles, so that’s what I’m going with.

These posts are taken directly from my travel journal … you can find the series here.