The Lake District is one of my favourite places. So I was thrilled at the news that it’s the first UK national park to be designated a Unesco World Heritage site – for its culture as well as its glorious walks and uplifting landscape. From Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud to Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, the Lakes have inspired some of our greatest writers and their words ...keep reading
I’ve just spent a magical four days staying at my in-laws’ house in the Lake District. My husband’s parents smartly bought a house in the peaceful and breathtakingly beautiful Newlands Valley more than 50 years ago and my husband spent every Easter and summer holiday there as a child. For a myriad of complex reasons we haven’t visited for four years – until this month, when we had a blissful four ...keep reading
Hurry, hurry, hurry – there’s no time to waste. If your children are interested in wildlife and love writing stories, then there are just a few days left for them to enter a great new short story competition run by the RSPCA. The Wild About Britain challenge is inspired by wonderful children’s classics like Wind in the Willows and The Tale of Peter Rabbit. In fact Peter Rabbit was voted ...keep reading
The British papers are reporting that Hollywood superstars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have booked a holiday in the Lake District with their seven children. Apparently they plan to take Maddox, 11, Pax, eight, Zahara, seven, Shiloh, six, and four-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox to a converted boathouse on the shores of Lake Windermere while Angelina shoots her new movie. For a family used to jet-setting between glamorous homes in LA, ...keep reading
As we ground to a halt on the motorway for the umpteenth time I began to wonder whether our Christmas trip to the Lake District was worth it. The journey should take four hours but in 20 years of visiting the place we’ve never managed it in less than six. We usually arrive in a filthy temper at midnight and swear we’ll never do it again. This was the first ...keep reading