The Lake District, England

I was fortunate to be able to return to the Lake District in May and find it to be one of the most beautiful areas of the England.  The Lake District is a National Park in the northwest of England, and is a popular holiday destination.    It is known for it’s lakes, rugged mountains and historic literacy associations.

All the land in England higher than 3,000 feet (910 m) above sea level lies within the National Park.  The highest mountain in England and the deepest and longest bodies of water in England.

The precise extent of the Lake District was not defined traditionally, but is slightly larger than that of the National Park, the total area of which is about 885 square miles (2,292 km2). The park extends just over 32 miles (51 km) from east to west and nearly 40 miles (64 km) from north to south, with areas such as the Lake District Peninsulas to the south lying outside the National Park.

It is the most visited national park in the United Kingdom with 15.8 million annual visitors and more than 23 million annual day visits, the largest of the thirteen national parks in England and Wales.

There are many paths over which the public has a right of way, all of which are signposted. Within the area of the National Park in 2012 there were 2,159 kilometres (1,342 mi) of public footpaths, 875 kilometres (544 mi) of public bridleways.

Many of these tracks arose centuries ago and were used either as ridge highways or as passes for travelling across the ridges between settlements in the valleys. Historically these paths were not planned for reaching summits, but more recently they are used by fell walkers for that purpose.

The Lake District is intimately associated with English literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. Thomas Gray was the first to bring the region to attention, when he wrote a journal of his Grand Tour in 1769, but it was William Wordsworth whose poems were most famous and influential. Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", inspired by the sight of daffodils on the shores of Ullswater, remains one of the most famous in the English language. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey became known as the Lake Poets.

During the early 20th century, the children's author Beatrix Potter was in residence at Hill Top Farm, setting many of her famous Peter Rabbit books in the Lake District.

http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/