The Daffodils - The Wordsworth Way Traditional Geocache
The Daffodils - The Wordsworth Way
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Short walk to the shore with views across and to both ends of the lake.
It was on the shores of Ullswater on the 15th April 1802 that William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy saw the Daffodils that inspired his famous poem. Wordsworth believed that Daffodils had a cheeriness that was capable of lifting depression.
When William Wordsworth was 28 he started to write a vast autobiographical poem – later to be named by his wife – ‘The Prelude’. The work documents his life, is the only existing reference to his early childhood and was not published until after his death.
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was born in Cockermouth and educated at Hawkshead Grammar School, during which time he lodged with Ann Tyson. Wordsworth left the Lake District to attend Cambridge University and after subsequent travel in Europe he returned to Grasmere where he and his sister Dorothy rented Dove Cottage. After his marriage to Mary Hutchinson the three resided at Dove Cottage until their growing family necessitated a move to a larger house. They moved to Allan Bank with Coleridge as a permanent guest and subsequently to the Old Rectory opposite St Oswald’s church in Grasmere, where their two youngest children died. Their final home was Rydal Mount where Wordsworth lived out the remainder of his life, during which time he succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate and ultimately died from a common cold in 1850. He is buried, along with many other members of his family, and Coleridge’s son, in the South-East corner of Saint Oswald’s church in Grasmere, one of the most visited shrines in the world.
In his youth Wordsworth wrote one of the earliest guides to the Lake District, which ran into many reprints and undoubtedly produced the interest that caused a lot of the problems he saw in popular tourism. His work as a poet, along with Coleridge and Southey (the Lakeland Poets) changed the Lakes in that the poets became and have remained a centre of the tourism they so much deplored. As his beloved Lake District turned from Wilderness to Elysium Wordsworth penned the lines ‘Is there no spot of English ground secure from rash assault?’ so often since quoted by conservationists to this day. Wordsworth used these words to attack the proposed Kendal to Windermere Railway line. The birth of the camera, which coincided with the death of Wordsworth, brought this ‘Wilderness’ much publicity and coupled with improved transport stimulated tourism – the industry that soon became and remains paramount today.
This series charts some of the milestones in the life of the poet William Wordsworth, the main Biography appearing on ‘The Daffodils’ cache listing only.
Caches in this series:
The Daffodils - The Wordsworth Way
W.W. Memorial/Mire House - The Wordsworth Way
The Old School/Blelham Tarn - The Wordsworth Way
Dove Cottage/Rock of Names - The Wordsworth Way
The Old Rectory/Allan Bank - The Wordsworth Way
The Coffin Trail/Rydal Mount - The Wordsworth Way
Dora’s Field - The Wordsworth Way
Grisedale Tarn - The Wordsworth Way
Diana's Looking Glass - The Wordsworth Way
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gerr ebbg.