On touring nothern England

The Travels of a Journalist—8 : Learning about Lake District and Yorkshire

By Shelton A. Gunaratne

(January 23, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) Although our 1990 tour of Northern England, which covered more than 1,000 km, was not a literary tour for the egghead types, it so happened that our tour director Patrick Bennet took us through the scenic Lake District National Park, which is also closely associated with the Romantic poetry of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who was England’s poet laureate from 1843 until his death, and his circle of fellow poets.

‘Wordsworth Country’

Wordsworth was one of the three Lake Poets identified as the Lake School. The other two were Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) and Robert Southey (1774-1843). These Lake Poets initiated the Romantic Age in English literature.

As our tour coach entered England’s largest national park in Cumbria on a Saturday morning (16 June 1990), I recalled reading extracts of the works of the Lake Poets in an anthology that I, as a high school student, was required to study. I can still recall four lines from Coleridge’s lengthy poem “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which my old school master Mr. Karunaratne at Carey College relished to read aloud:

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.

Of the three main Lake Poets, the “true” native of the Lake District was Wordsworth, who was born in a Georgian townhouse in Cockermouth, Cumbria. We visited the site where he and his wife lie buried at the Church of St Oswald in Grasmere (population 800).

Our coach driver David Price took us on a scenic tour of the national park along the eastern bank of Lake Windermere—past Bowness, Ambleside and Rydal—to Grasmere. The 18-km long Windermere is the largest natural lake in England. As we drove north, we saw the 978-meter Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak on to our left. [Ben Nevis in Scotland is the highest in Britain. Snowdon in Wales is the second highest.] This stretch of the park, which comprises ribbon-shaped lakes and steep hills, is called “Wordsworth Country.”

We left the park through Keswick. Southey, who was a resident of Keswick for 40 years, lies buried in Crosthwaite churchyard. Coleridge lived for some time in Keswick, and also at Grasmere.

Wedgwood Pottery

We started the northward journey on June 14 after an early breakfast at the Leofric in Coventry still thinking about Lady Godiva’s magnificent gesture. Price, our tireless driver, took us via Birmingham, 36 km northwest of Coventry, to Liverpool, our destination for the day, another 188 km north.

On the way, Bennet, our tour guide, exercised his authority to get us off the motorway to visit the Wedgwood Pottery in the village of Barlaston, eight km south of Stoke-on-Trent.

Founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood, the company employs 1,800 people to produce luxury brands of tableware—Kutani Crane, for example. I am still not sure whether the stopover here was a commercial subterfuge.

My son Junius, then 10, and I would have preferred to walk a few kilometers on the 429-km long Pennine Way national trail (opened in 1965), which starts at Edale in the Peak District National Park, crosses the Yorkshire Dales National Park and ends at Kirk Yetholm at the Scotland border with the Northumberland National Park. Edale was only 54 km northeast of Stoke-on-Trent. [I compensated for the disappointment of not making it to Edale by getting on to the Pennine Way on a subsequent visit (23 August 1992) to Yorkshire Dales and jogging more than two km along the trail from Thwaite to Muker.] This national trail was the brainchild of journalist Tom Stephenson, who was inspired by his experience with the Appalachian Trail in the United States.

Chester and Liverpool

Our second stop for the day was Chester (population 77,000), where we willy nilly spent four hours trying to make sense of its city walls, the Rows and its black-and-white architecture. Junius and I walked the three-km long footpath atop the walls (encompassing the medieval city limits) crossing roads by bridges over Eastgate, Northgate, St Martin's Gate, Watergate, Bridgegate, Newgate and Wolf Gate.

We also explored the Rows, the aboveground network of shopping walkways unique to Chester. We learned that the peculiar architecture of the Victorian buildings was a result of “the black-and-white revival.”

We ate a “pilgrim’s lunch” at the refectory of the cathedral. As well, we visited the Chester Castle, the remains of the Roman fortress, the Roman Garden, the Roman amphitheater, and the remains of St John’s Church. The Romans had named this city (on the River Dee) Deva Victrix in AD 79.

Price picked us up at 5 p.m. and drove us to Liverpool (population 435,500) in Merseyside, 34 km to the northeast, to spend the night. After eating dinner at Jenny’s, we walked to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (Roman Catholic) and the Liverpool Cathedral (Anglican), the largest cathedral in Britain.

The next morning, we left Liverpool driving through the city’s famous waterfront and the docks. Our tour did not allow for much exploration of this city associated with the Beatles.

We were on our way to Grasmere in the heart of the Lake District—167 km from Liverpool. We passed through Lancashire and drove parallel to the western bounds of Yorkshire Dales to reach Cumbria. This travelogue has already outlined our Lake District experience. The Scotland border was another 74 km to the north.

Hadrian’s Wall marks the border between England and Scotland. Roman Emperor Hadrian initiated its construction in AD 122. It was largely completed within six years. We had a close look at the wall when Price drove us some 100 km eastward from the Gretna-Carlisle (western) end of the wall to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (population 273,600). We observed the tranquil beauty of the Northumberland National Park to the north as the eastern end of the wall faded away into our horizon. Kirk Yetholm, the northern terminus of the Pennine Way, lay hidden from our view.

At Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, we crossed the river to Gateshead on the south side. Our lunch stop was Durham (population 43,000), another 18 km to the south in the county bearing the same name. Junius and I ate our lunch on a bench along the River Wear. Then we walked to the Durham [Norman] Castle and Durham Cathedral in the premises of Durham University.

Yorkshire Experience

We were now ready for the putative Yorkshire experience. Yorkshire is supposedly different from the rest of England because the Yorkshire folks use a dialect called Broad Yorkshire or Tyke—a mixture of Old English and Old Norse. Those who have watched the TV drama “All Creatures Great and Small” [written by a veterinary surgeon under the penname James Herriot and mostly filmed on location in the Yorkshire Dales by the BBC] would be familiar with this dialect. Therefore, some claim, that Yorkshire has its own culture.

Yorkshire County, the largest in England, has been divided into four parts—North, South, East and West—for administrative convenience. But our activities on this tour were confined to North Yorkshire, where we spent two hours in the afternoon in the city of York (population 195,400) and spent the night in the city of Middlesbrough (population 142,300).

York is a walled city on the River Ouse founded by the Romans, just like Chester in Cheshire (177 km to the southwest diagonally across the Peak District NP). The Romans called it Eboracum when they founded the city in AD 71. Angles took over the city when the Romans departed in AD 415. When the Vikings captured the city in AD 866, they renamed it Jórvík (York in Scandinavian). [Another walled city that I later in May 1994 visited was Xi’an, China’s ancient capital. But it had nothing to do with the Romans.]

The walls encircling the city center also serve as popular walkways. In the city center stands the York Munster, the second largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Its three towers dominate the city. In contrast to the Rows in Chester, York has The Shambles, a narrow medieval street lined with shops, boutiques and tearooms. Such narrow pedestrian streets, called “snickelways,” are a feature of York. A number of museums also adorn the city.

I was unhappy that our Yorkshire experience failed to give us a sense of the literary genius of Yorkshire—for instance, the memorabilia associated with the Bronte sisters (Anne, Charlotte and Emily) or with other literary giants like poets W.H. Auden and William Empson, novelists like J. B. Priestly and Barbara Taylor Bradford or best-selling authors like James Herriot (Alf Wight). We also had no time to listen to authentic Tyke.

The next day, we completed our tour of Britain. We left Middlesbrough in the morning for London—covering a distance of 435 km. On the way, we stopped at Cambridge to replenish our tired intellects. Back in London, we thanked Bennet and Price for being our gardiens temporaires and said goodbye with a handsome tip. They smiled.

Next: A drive through Germany’s Black Forest

(The writer is professor of mass communications emeritus, Minnesota State University Moorhead.)