Daffodils and fighter jets

Grasmere, 7th August 2017 – We are in the Lake District and settle into Howe Foot Lodge, a wonderful stone house where time stood still. Not really, because there is Wi-Fi… but the furniture, the rooms with high ceilings and the light peaty smell of a wintery fireplace throw you back in time. It is August but also today, we see the surrounding chimneys spew smoke. I suppose people heat their homes to get out the damp and moist. It rains a lot in the Lake District. Just behind our lodge is Dove Cottage. This is the house were William Wordsworth spent a great deal of his life with his sister, after he left his French wife Anette Vallon and daughter in France. We visit the house and ‘in vacant and pensive mood’ we sit outside in the wooden cabin at the top of the garden. All of a sudden, there is an F15 fighter jet flying over our heads with incredible speed and noise. We can almost see the pilot. Kate from Howe Foot Lodge tells us that night that the RAF and US Air Force use a set of valleys in the region for pilots to practise. ‘My dog hates them and we hate them… until the day we will need them I suppose’. I remember from Dove Cottage that Wordsworth walked no less than 175 000 miles in his lifetime. Nature inspires! Read his most famous poem below:

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.

Dove Cottage in Grasmere on a cloudy day (FDC)

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