“Found it!  Oh no, maybe not …” “It’s over here …” “That’s not it. Look. The mountain’s in the wrong place.” “If I lean over the river I think I’ve got it …” Rydal Bridge – photo by Zoe Dawes This was the conversation ricocheting around the Cumbrian fells as...

Swallows swooped on the evening air, the sky turned a delicate shade of pink-streaked blue and the vino-quaffing audience shushed each other as trumpets sounded across the lawn. “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York” boomed menacing Richard III in his famous...

Was it that unpronounceable volcanic eruption that brought Iceland into mainstream travel notice? Or maybe their spectacular banking debacle that created headline news; whatever the reason, suddenly everyone is talking about this latest must-see destination. Old Iceland hands may feel slightly put out as their secret world opens up to...

“The first thing which I remember as an event in life was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar’s Crag on Derwentwater.”  Victorian art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin described this view as one of the three most beautiful in Europe.  Friar’s Crag is a one of the most...

“She was probably a very fecund witch who produced lots of wild, attractive and subversive daughters, scandalising the locals and creating mayhem amongst the farmers and their sons …”  One of many wonderfully imaginative local legends given for Long Meg and her Daughters.  Few people realise that what is said...

“Oh, aren’t they tiny!”  This is a common response from anyone seeing the native, and oh so famous, Lakeland daffodil. Unlike the large and sturdy garden daffodil, our local one is a delicate wee flower, springing up in bunches all over Cumbria at this time of year.  (Well, to be...