A Walk In Wordswoth Country

Rosie Schaap revisits the fairytale towns and green vales of England’s Lake District, where the food is now as much of a draw as the lush, romantic landscape.

- Rosie Schaap

IT CALLS TO MIND UNREAL PLACES:

Tolkien’s Middle Earth, innumerable iterations of fairyland. It is unlike anywhere I’ve ever seen—and, more to the point, unlike any place I’ve ever felt. I know nowhere quite so lushly green, so exquisitely gentle here, and craggily forbidding there. It had been more than a decade since I’d visited England’s Lake District, just south of the Scottish border, and even to imagine being back there without my husband, Frank, who died in 2010 of a rare form of cancer, was for a long time not possible. But last year, I felt ready.

If England were a play, the climate would be a main character. Not as predictable as its reputation, it is capricious, and its machinations frequently drive the plot. The Monday afternoon I alit from the train in the Lake District village of Oxenholme, I couldn’t believe my good fortune: The sun shone so brightly that it made me laugh in happy disbelief.