This private literary tour sets off from your hotel or guest house with your local private guide and driver in a comfortable car for a short drive through the Lakeland fells to two of the houses most closely associated with the 19th century poet, William Wordsworth.
Are you ready to travel back to the 1770s and follow in the footsteps of our famed Cumbrian poet and writer, William Wordsworth? On this tour we will visit the houses that he lived in and travel through the beautiful Lake District that so inspired his work.
Situated in the small market town of Cockermouth, Wordsworth House is presented as it would have been when they lived here with their parents, three brothers and servants in the 1770s.
Today, this pefectly preserved and very homely Georgian townhouse is the real deal with food on the dining table and very often a fire burning in the working kitchen. Maybe even a recipe William and Dorothy might have eaten for you to taste. If you fancy a spot of poetry then try writing with the Ink and quill pens in the clerk’s office or you’re more musically minded why not try the replica harpsichord.
Of course the house is only part of the story as no visit is complete without a visit to the garden which is overflowing with 18th-century style vegetables, fruit, herbs & flowers.
There are plenty of fine old pubs in Cockermouth should you wish for a drink or a tasty lunch before heading down the A591 road, officially the best road in Britain to the beautiful little town of Grasmere and Dover Cottage. It was in this little cottage, at times ‘crammed edge full’ with people, in the heart of the remote Lake District, that William Wordsworth wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language and Dorothy kept her famous ‘Grasmere Journal’, now on display in the adjoining Museum.
William came across his first Grasmere home by chance as he and his brother John walked along this lane with his fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in late 1799. He and his sister Dorothy moved in just a few weeks later.
The cottage had once been an inn, the ‘Dove and Olive Bough’. It was now to be the Wordsworths’ home for the next eight years. In 1802 William married Mary Hutchinson and three of their five children were born here.
Step into Dove Cottage to get a sense of that time: stone floors, dark panelled rooms, glowing coal fires and the family’s own belongings. Little has changed in the house since the Wordsworths lived here.
Stroll in the Dove Cottage garden, a place of refuge, meditation and inspiration. It was, wrote Wordsworth, ‘the work of our own hands’. Here they planted flowers and vegetables, watched birds and butterflies and, most importantly, read, talked and wrote poetry.
Next door to Dove Cottage is the wonderful Wordsworth museum which is full of his handwritten manuscripts and lots of personal momentos of the great writer, a must-see for all fans.
Prices
1 Adult = £200
2 Adults = £195
3 Adults = £190
4 Adults = £175
Departure Time:9am
City Location: Cumbria – The Lake District
Duration of Tour: 7 hours
(Approximate times as all tours are bespoke)
For more information or to make a booking, please email yeoldeenglandtours@gmail.com
Alternatively you can book by using the automated booking process with Viator below.
Stephen Liddell 