Rydal and Dove Cottage

The next section of the walk is on the 'coffin road', along which bodies were carried in funeral processions from Ambleside to be buried in consecrated ground in Grasmere. Magnificently graced by oaks, Rydal Water sparkles below to the left while bracken-covered fellside sweeps up to Scots Pine on the right. A loaf-shaped block of stone by the wall — the 'coffin rest stone' — provided pallbearers a sobering rest after taking regular liquid refreshment along the way.

Entering a wood where a mighty oak leans through a gap in the stone wall, you pass skeletal white trunks of once-magnificent elms that succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970s, with steep scree tumbling from Nab Scar above. Taking the lower path at the split (avoiding the false line along the Victorian aqueduct retaining wall from Thirlmere Reservoir to Manchester), you pass Brockstone House and a 'witch tree' (a thorn growing out of an ash, revered by Celts as magical because it occupies a middle world without root in earth or place in sky).

Passing a fine viewpoint overlooking Rydal Water and White Moss Pond (where Wordsworth once skated when it froze over), you reach Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth lived from 1799 to 1808 and wrote much of his most admired poetry.

The return route crosses the River Rothay (which runs through Grasmere to Rydal Water and Windermere) and enters deciduous woods where red squirrels may sometimes be spotted. Loughrigg Terrace hugs the edge of the hillside, famed for breathtaking views stretching across Rydal Water to Nab Cottage (where writer Thomas de Quincey lodged and married the landlord's daughter) and up to Nab Scar.

Further along is the cathedral-like scale of Rydal Cave, an old slate quarry with a flattened, safe floor and pools where minnows swim. Returning via woodland along the River Rothay, keep an eye out for the white-chested dipper walking underwater on the riverbed against swift currents to find caddis fly larvae before returning to Rydal.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.