"Let
nature be your teacher"
wrote William Wordsworth, undoubtedly the most celebrated of
all Lakeland residents, past and present. For Wordsworth,
nature, whose handiwork in the Lake District is more
dramatic than in perhaps any other corner of England, was
indeed the ultimate teacher - and muse, providing
inspiration for his nourishing his soul with ceaseless
wonder. So it is for countless others in our day. People
cant help falling in love with the Lake District.Where does this magical domain begin and end? It lies entirely within Cumbria, covering parts of the old countries of Cumberland and Westmorland and a former enclave of Lancashire. The heartland is easy enough to identify: the scattering of fifteen or sixteen main lakes, together with their sentinel mountains and satellite tarns. But the periphery is not so easy to establish. The Lake District National Park, with its boundaries tracing a badly drawn circle thirty-five to forty miles across, is on thing, the Lake District itself is arguably another. Tourist Boards and guide books usually make a more generous allocation of territory. They tend to include the gateway towns of Kendal, Cockermouth and Penrith; additional stretches of the West coast including the old ports of Whitehaven and Workington; and much of the Morecombe Bay or "Lake district Peninsulas" region, such as Grange-over-Sands an even Barrow-in-Furnness.