Romance on the lake

Dawn breaks at Lake Windermere like in a kitschy scene from a Mills and Boon novel.

The fog lifts slowly from the surface of the lake, the first rays of sunlight evaporate the dew from the grass and a rabbit sits back on its hind legs and sniffs the air.
The only thing missing is a young couple in love. However, on this morning a group of hikers appears instead. Thankfully two of them are holding hands.
The Lake District in Cumbria in England is known as “Little Scotland” and is an ideal place for nature lovers, romantics and people seeking relaxation.
The area covers about 80 square kilometres and is located in the northwest of Britain.
It is a nature reserve on a manageable scale where the mountains are like hills, the lakes of a reasonable size and the pastures just large enough for the herds of hundreds of sheep grazing them.
A typical Cumbrian sheep is grey with a white face and looks like a walking Shetland pullover. The breed of sheep is called the Herdwick.
Naturally the area has been home to a number of well-known people. The poet Wordsworth lived at Lake Grasmere, the best-known part of the Lake District thanks its Victorian era villages.
A hike along one of the many paths from the poet’s house, Dove Cottage, to his grave in St Oswald’s provides a good opportunity to test some of the refreshments on offer.
The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop is near St Oswald’s and has been selling gingerbread for 150 years.
The largest lake in the region is the 17 kilometre-long Lake Windermere. The Lake District is also home to the deepest body of water in England, Wastwater, which plunges to a depth of 80 metres.
Some of England’s tallest peaks are to be found in the Lake District, the highest of which is Scafell at 977 metres.
Just like Cornwall in the south, the climate in the Lake District is mild thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream.
Snow is rarely deeper than five or six centimetres in winter. “When that happens, chaos breaks out,” says the tour operator, Graham Wilkinson.
People here have never seen a snow plough and neither have they ever been ice-skating. The last time ice formed on the lakes was in 1996.
“The ducks were very confused,” recalls Wilkinson.
Houses are typically built from grey slate stone and most of them are hundreds of years old. The circular rather than rectangular chimneys are evidence of the wealth the original builders possessed.
But owning such a home with a view over one of the area’s valleys can easily cost $2.5 million.
City people trying to get away from noise pollution and celebrities seeking peace and quiet have driven the prices sky high.
But the area is also popular with ordinary people looking for relaxation who mainly visit in May and June.
“But I think the Lake District is at its most beautiful in winter,” says the tour guide George, “It is very quiet here and you can see for miles.”
However, Cumbria’s coastline is not so kind to the eye and consists largely of mile after mile of mud — so swimming is not really an option.
The geology in Cumbria is volcanic and copper, silver, graphite and gold have been mined here for generations.
Vikings extracted the metals from the ground and 78 per cent of the Lake District’s population today is descended from them. Or they might be descended from the ancient Romans who also dug for the precious metals here. Its reputation as a mining region attracted many less reputable people.
Monks who arrived in the town of Hawkshead built an abbey on the hill and a courthouse in the valley. Two years after the courthouse opened, 490 bandits had been condemned to die.
The author and artist Beatrice Potter is also closely connected to the region. Potter’s drawings of Peter Rabbit and his family are familiar to every child in Britain.
But her work is also well known in Japan and thousands of Japanese take part in the pilgrimage to Potter’s home, Hill Top, every year.
Potter grew up in London but fell in love with the area’s natural beauty. When her writing became popular, she bought a small farm here.
On her death in 1943 at the age of 77, Potter owned 15 farms and numerous cottages on 4,000 hectares of land.
She paid for their restoration and organised their upkeep thereby preventing them from being demolished and lost to later generations.
Check the internet:
www.visitbritain.com/.