This soundwalk shares Dorothy's joy and passion for the Lake District. Grasmere Women's Institute and friends read passages from Dorothy's journal in the locations that inspired her.

"This letter was written in reply to an aunt, who, angered by Dorothy’s going on a long-distance walk with her brother, wrote to dissuade her from ‘rambling about the country on foot’. Dorothy replied carefully, but sharply: ‘I rather thought it would have given my friends pleasure to hear that I had courage to make use of the strength with which nature has endowed me’. [PARAGRAPH BREAK] ‘Courage’ was not a word Dorothy chose lightly: it was certainly a courageous act to go walking in the 1790s. Walking was associated with democratic protest and, in the years following the French Revolution in 1789, the freedom walking enacted was feared by people in power. More than that, walking was linked to vagrancy, criminalised in Dorothy’s lifetime by the Vagrancy Act of 1824. In this climate, to walk for pleasure was in itself a form of rebellion."

Read by Louise Sykes

"Wednesday June 23rd. I slept till ½ past 3 o clock - called Molly before 4 & had got myself dressed & breakfasted before 5, but it rained & I went to bed again. It is now 20 minutes past 10, a sunshiny morning - I walked to the top of the hill & sate under a wall near John's Grove facing the sun. I read a scene or 2 in As You Like It. I met Charles Lloyd & old Mr Lloyd was upstairs - Mrs Ll had been to meet me. I wrote a line to Wm by the Lloyds. Coleridge & Leslie came just as I had lain down after dinner. C brought me Wm's letter. He had got well to Eusemere. C & I accompanied Leslie to the Boat House. It was a sullen coldish Evening, no sunshine, but after we had parted from Leslie a light came out suddenly that repaid us for all. It fell only upon one hill, & the island, but it arrayed the grass & trees in gem-like brightness. I cooked C his supper. We sate up till one o clock."

Read by Lex Heaton

"Wednesday 2nd June 1802. In the morning we observed that the Scarlet Beans were drooping in the leaves in great Numbers owing, we guess to an insect. We sate a while in the orchard - then we went to the old carpenters about the hurdles. Yesterday an old man called, a grey-headed man, above 70 years of age; he said he had been a soldier, that his wife & children had died in Jamaica. He had a Beggars wallet over his shoulders, a coat of shreds & patches altogether of a drab colour - he was tall & though his body was bent he had the look of one used to have been upright. I talked a while to him, & then gave him a piece of cold Bacon & a penny - said he ‘You're a fine woman!' I could not help smiling. I suppose he meant ‘You're a kind woman'. Afterwards a woman called travelling to Glasgow. After dinner William was very unwell. We went into Frank's field, crawled up the little glen & planned a seat then went to Mr Olliffs Hollins & sate there - found a beautiful shell-like purple fungus in Frank's field. After tea we walked to Butterlip How & backwards & forwards there. All the young oak tree leaves are dry as powder. A cold south wind portending Rain. After we came in we sate in deep silence at the window - I on a chair & William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence & Love, a blessed hour. We drew to the fire before bed-time & ate some Broth for our suppers. I ought to have said that on Tuesday evening, namely June 1 st, we walked upon the Turf near Johns Grove. It was a lovely night. The clouds of the western sky reflected a saffron light upon the upper end of the lake - all was still - We went to look at Rydale. There was an alpine fire-like red upon the tops of the mountains. This was gone when we came in view of the Lake. But we saw the Lake in a new & most beautiful point of view between two little rocks, & behind a small ridge that had concealed it from us. - This White Moss a place made for all kinds of beautiful works of art & nature, woods & valleys, fairy valleys & fairy Tairns, miniature mountains, alps above alps. Little John Dawson came past us from the woods with a huge stick over his shoulder."

Read by Jane Caven

"Tuesday 27th. I walked to Ambleside with letters - met the post before I reached Mr Partridges, one paper, only a letter for Coleridge - I expected a letter from Wm. It was a sweet morning, the ashes in the valleys nearly in full leaf but still to be distinguished, quite bare
on the higher grounds. I was warm in returning, & becoming cold with sitting in the house - I had a bad head-ach - went to bed after dinner, & lay till after 5 - not well after tea. I worked in the garden, but did not walk further. A delightful evening before the Sun set but afterwards it grew colder. Mended stockings."

Read by Gill Cowton

"Dorothy Wordsworth, "Thoughts on my sick-bed"

And has the remnant of my life
Been pilfered of this sunny Spring?
And have its own prelusive sounds
Touched in my heart no echoing string?

Ah! say not so—the hidden life
Couchant within this feeble frame
Hath been enriched by kindred gifts,
That, undesired, unsought-for, came

With joyful heart in youthful days
When fresh each season in its Round
I welcomed the earliest Celandine
Glittering upon the mossy ground;

With busy eyes I pierced the lane
In quest of known and unknown things,
—The primrose a lamp on its fortress rock,
The silent butterfly spreading its wings,

The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath,
The daffodil dancing in the breeze,
The caroling thrush, on his naked perch,
Towering above the budding trees.

Our cottage-hearth no longer our home,
Companions of Nature were we,
The Stirring, the Still, the Loquacious, the Mute—
To all we gave our sympathy.

Yet never in those careless days
When spring-time in rock, field, or bower
Was but a fountain of earthly hope
A promise of fruits & the splendid flower.

No! then I never felt a bliss
That might with that compare
Which, piercing to my couch of rest,
Came on the vernal air.

When loving Friends an offering brought,
The first flowers of the year,
Culled from the precincts of our home,
From nooks to Memory dear.

With some sad thoughts the work was done.
Unprompted and unbidden,
But joy it brought to my hidden life,
To consciousness no longer hidden.

I felt a power unfelt before,
Controlling weakness, languor, pain;
It bore me to the Terrace walk
I trod the Hills again; —

No prisoner in this lonely room,
I saw the green Banks of the Wye,
Recalling thy prophetic words,
Bard, Brother, Friend from infancy!

No need of motion, or of strength,
Or even the breathing air;
—I thought of Nature’s loveliest scenes;
And with Memory I was there."

Read by Jo Taylor

"William attributed to his sister two gifts that were crucial for his poetry: ‘She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.’ He felt that Dorothy had taught him how to see, and hear, beyond the surface of things. Her attention to tiny details, and willingness to sit in stillness at a place so that she could absorb the nuances of its sights and sounds, is captured in her journals, and reflected in William’s most famous poetry. This journal entry is perhaps the most famous example of the two writers’ reciprocal relationship. It describes the daffodils at Gowbarrow Park on the shores of Ullswater. Dorothy’s lively prose captures the daffodils’ movements: she writes that they ‘tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind’. Later, inspired by both the daffodils themselves and Dorothy’s evocative description of them, William wrote a poem that established his centrality to generations of poetry readers:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

Read by Abigal Palmer

"Tuesday Morning [20th]. A fine mild rain - after Breakfast the sky cleared & before the clouds passed from the hill, I went to Ambleside - It was a sweet morning - Everything green & overflowing with life & the streams making a perpetual song with the thrushes & all little birds, not forgetting the Stone chats. The post was not come in - I walked as far as Windermere & met him there. No letters! no papers. Came home by Clappersgate - I was sadly tired, ate a hasty dinner & had a bad head-ach, went to bed & slept at least 2 hours. Rain came on in the Evening - Molly washing."

Read by Gill Cowton

"22 June 1802. On this summer’s day, Dorothy rather than walking to Ambleside for the post, she waits for it by lying in a field ‘looking at the distant mountains, -- looking & listening to the River.’ These moments of stillness were important for her; like the twenty-first century Scottish mountain writer Nan Shepherd, Dorothy recognised the uplands as ‘living’, and these moments of still absorption into the landscape allowed to see, and feel, into the life of natural things. [PARAGRAPH BREAK] Later in the day, finding that she ‘could settle to nothing’, she resolved to leave off her reading and letter-writing to ‘go to William’. She asks one John Fisher to walk with her ‘over the Fells’. Maps were often too cumbersome – and too unreliable – at this time for on-the-spot navigation, so having a guide was a usual practice for men and women walkers at this time. It was an acknowledgment both of the fact that shepherds had known for centuries the fells that recreational walkers were only just discovering, and that it can be treacherously easy to lose the way in the hills without good navigation."

Read by Lex Heaton

"Monday [19th]. Sauntered a good deal in the garden, bound carpets, mended old clothes. Read Timon of Athens. Dried linen - Molly weeded the turnips, John stuck the peas. We had not much sunshine or wind but no rain till about 7 o'clock when we had a slight shower just after I had set out upon my walk. I did not return but walked up into the Black quarter. I sauntered a long time among the rocks above the church. The most delightful situation possible for a cottage commanding two distinct views of the vale & of the lake, is among those rocks - I strolled on, gathered mosses, &c. The quietness & still seclusion of the valley affected me even to producing the deepest melancholy -  forced myself from it. The wind rose before I went to bed. No rain - Dodwell & Wilkinson called in my absence."

Read by Louise Sykes

"Friday evening [29th]. We walked to Rydale to inquire for letters. We walked over the hill by the Firgrove. I sate upon a rock & observed a flight of swallows gathering together high above my head they flew towards Rydale. We walked through the wood over the stepping stones - The lake of Rydale very beautiful, partly still. John & I left Wm to compose an Inscription - that about the path. We had a very fine walk by the gloomy lake. There was a curious yellow reflection in the water as of corn fields - there was no light in the clouds from which it appeared to come."

Read by Sharon Savasi

"Friday morning [16th]. Warm & mild after a fine night of rain. Transplanted raddishes after breakfast. Walked to Mr Gells with the Books - gathered mosses & plants. The woods extremely beautiful with all autumnal variety & softness - I carried a basket of mosses, & gathered some wild plants - Oh! that we had a book of botany - all flowers now are gay & deliciously sweet. The primrose still pre-eminent among the later flowers of the spring.

Foxgloves very tall - with their heads budding. I went forward round the lake at the foot of Loughrigg fell - I was much amused with the business of a pair of stone chats. Their restless voices as they skimmed along the water following each other their shadows under them, & their returning back to the stones on the shore, chirping with the same unwearied voice. Could not cross the water so I went round by the stepping stones. The morning clear but cloudy, that is the hills were not overhung by mists. After dinner Aggy weeded onions & carrots - I helped for a little - wrote to Mary Hutchinson - washed my head - worked. After tea went to Ambleside - a pleasant cool but not cold evening. Rydale was very beautiful with spear-shaped streaks of polished steel. No letters! - only one newspaper. I returned by Clappersgate.

Grasmere was very solemn in the last glimpse of twilight it calls home the heart to quietness. I had been very melancholy in my walk back. I had many of my saddest thoughts & I could not keep the tears within me. But when I came to Grasmere I felt that it did me good. I finished my letter to MH.- ate hasty pudding, & went to bed. As I was going out in the morning I met a half crazy old man. He shewed me a pincushion, & begged a pin, afterwards a halfpenny. He began in a kind of indistinct voice in this manner ' Matthew Jobson's lost a cow. Tom Nichol has two good horses strained - Jim Jones's cow's brokken her horn, &c &c - - '

He went into Aggys & persuaded her to give him some whey & let him boil some porridge. She declares he ate two quarts."

Read by Gill Cowton

"Although this poem was actually composed about a ‘floating island’ – a non-permanent island made largely of plants – at Hawkshead, the attention to the richness of life on the island is relevant, too, for the island at Grasmere. Dorothy’s characteristic attention to detail takes on a scientific turn here; she recognises it as ‘a peopled world’, even though it is only the size of ‘a tiny room’. Her description of the ways that the rich plant and animal lives intermingle on the island anticipate evolutionary understandings of the natural world (most famously explored, around half a century after Dorothy wrote this poem, by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species [1859]). The poem acknowledges the natural world’s fragility – but it ends hoping that when the island (or, maybe, when the poet herself) is gone, ‘the lost fragments shall remain, / To fertilize some other ground’."

Read by Jo Taylor

"On this ‘sweet, mild’ day, Dorothy keeps herself occupied in William’s absence by reading and walking. On this day alone, she walks up the fell behind Dove Cottage, and later heads out again towards Ambleside. Walking long distances was not an usual pastime in this era – the governess and walker Ellen Weeton, for instance, regularly undertook 35-mile-a-day hikes around the Lakes and elsewhere. Even so the distances Dorothy covers on a normal day are notable; a friend, Thomas De Quincey, estimated that William Wordsworth walked about 180,000 miles over the course of his lifetime, and Dorothy may have done about the same. The distances she covers are balanced by the attention she pays at particular moments. In this memorable passage, she describes a walk to Ambleside around Grasmere and Rydal. Laying down ‘upon the steep at Loughrigg’, she experienced a strange sensation: ‘my heart dissolved in what I saw’. She becomes utterly absorbed in the place, and almost seems to become physically a part of it."

Read by Jacki Godfrey

"Monday May 26. A very fine morning, worked in the garden till after 10 when old Mr Simpson came & talked to me till after 12. Molly weeding. Wrote letters to J H, Coleridge, C Ll. & W. I walked towards Rydale & turned aside at my favorite field. The air & the lake were still - one cottage light in the vale, had so much of the day left that I could distinguish objects, the woods; trees & houses. Two or three different kinds of Birds sang at intervals on the opposite shore. I sate till I could hardly drag myself away I grew so sad. 'When pleasant thoughts'"

Read by Gill Cowton

"May 14 1800 [Wednesday]. Wm & John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at 1/2 past 2 o'clock - cold pork in their pockets. I left them at the turning of the Low-wood bay under the trees. My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W. when I gave him a farewell kiss. I sate a long time upon a stone at the margin of the lake, & after a flood of tears my heart was easier. The lake looked at me I knew not why dull and melancholy, and the weltering on the shores seemed a heavy sound. I walked as long as I could amongst the stones of the shore. The wood rich in flowers. A beautiful yellow, palish yellow flower, that looked thick round & double, & smelt very sweet - I supposed it was a ranunculus - Crowfoot, the grassy-leaved Rabbit-toothed white flower, strawberries, Geranium - scentles violet, anemones two kinds, orchises, primroses. The heckberry very beautiful as a low shrub. The crab coming out. Met a blind man, driving a very large beautiful Bull & a cow - he walked with two sticks. Came home by Clappersgate. The valley very green, many sweet views up to Rydale head when I could juggle away the fine houses, but they disturbed me even more than when I have been happier - one beautiful view of the Bridge, without Sir Michaels.Sate down very often, tho' it was cold. I resolved to write a journal of the time till W. and J. return, & I set about keeping my resolve because I will not quarrel with myself, & because I shall give Wm pleasure by it when he comes home again. At Rydale a woman of the village, stout & well-dressed, begged a halfpenny - she had never she said done it before - but these hard times! - Arrived at home with a bad head-ach, set some slips of privett. The evening cold had a fire - my face now flame-coloured.

It is nine o'clock, I shall soon go to bed. A young woman begged at the door - she had come from Manchester on Sunday morn with two shillings & a slip of paper which she supposed a Bank note - it was a cheat. She had buried her husband & three children with a year & a half - All in one grave - burying very dear - paupers all put in one place - 20 shillings paid for as much ground as will bury a man - a grave stone to be put over it or the right will be lost - 11/6 each time the ground is opened. Oh! that I had a letter from William!"

Read by Gill Cowton

"This poem records Dorothy’s experience of making a home in Grasmere. It describes a solitary excursion that takes the walker ‘eastward’ to the ‘lofty hills’ around the village. Although she begins feeling like a ‘Stranger’ in the valley, the poem ends with a joyful declaration that she has become ‘an Inmate of this vale’. By walking in, and talking to, the hills, she comes to a sense of belonging, of home, in this new place. [PARAGRAPH BREAK] This was a level of independence and freedom unavailable to many women in Dorothy’s time. The social restrictions Dorothy rebelled against continue to manifest more than two centuries later in the fact that, still today, women continue to report feeling less safe than men when walking alone. In this poem, Dorothy finds herself ‘lured by a little winding path’. That word ‘lured’ perhaps indicates a sense of danger in walking by herself in an unknown place – but, in this case, it leads Dorothy to a ‘summit high’ where she finds a new joy in making a home somewhere that she can walk alone."

Sources:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/perceptionsofpersonalsafetyandexperiencesofharassmentgreatbritain/2to27june2021#perceptions-of-personal-safety
https://www.pathsforall.org.uk/mediaLibrary/other/english/paths-for-all-national-survey---attitudes-and-barriers-to-walking-in-scotland.pdf

Read by Abigal Palmer

"Wednesday 3rd September. Coleridge Wm & John went from home to go upon Helvellyn with Mr Simpson. They set out after breakfast. I accompanied them up near the Blacksmith's. A fine coolish morning. I ironed till 1/2 past three - now very hot. I then went to a funeral at John Dawsons. About 10 men & 4 women. Bread cheese & ale - they talked sensibly & chearfully about common things. The dead person 56 years of age buried by the parish - the coffin was neatly lettered & painted black & covered with a decent cloth. They set the corpse down at the door & while we stood within the threshold the men with their hats off sang with decent & solemn countenances a verse of a funeral psalm. The corpse was then borne down the hill & they sang till they had got past the Town-end. I was affected to tears while we stood in the house, the coffin lying before me. There were no near kindred, no children. When we got out of the dark house the sun was shining & the prospect looked so divinely beautiful as I never saw it. It seemed more sacred than I had ever seen it, & yet more allied to human life. The green fields, neighbours of the churchyard, were green as possible& with the brightness of the sunshine looked quite Gay. I thought she was going to a quiet spot & I could not help weeping very much. When we came to the bridge they began to sing again & stopped during 4 lines before they entered the church-yard. The priest met us - he did not look as a man ought to do on such an occasion - I had seen him half drunk the day before in a pot-house. Before we came with the corpse one of the company observed he wondered what sort of cue 'our Parson would be in.' NB it was the day after the Fair. I had not finished ironing till 7 o'clock. The wind was now high & I did not walk - writing my journal now at 8 o clock. Wm & John came home at 10 o clock."

Read by Abigal Palmer

Walking with Dorothy - Long Walk

17 ECHOES

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The Echoes

1794 - Letters to Aunt Crackenthorpe

23/06/1802 - John's Grove

02/06/1802 - Whitemoss

27/05/1800 - Walk Ambleside

Poetry Thoughts on Sickbed

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