I’ve been thinking a lot about childhood during the lockdown, probably because this was when I last had time on my hands. Day after day with nothing to do in the summer beyond figure out how to pass the time. Feeling that I should be doing something, but what? I wake up exhausted, forehead furrowed,…
On 17 March 2020, I guided Mariko-san from Nagasaki together with her daughter and family friend around Windermere, Grasmere and Rydal in the Lake District. Starting with a cruise from Bowness, we enjoyed red squirrels and breath-taking views of Grasmere at Allan Bank before visiting the Wordsworth graves at St Oswald’s Church, then walking the…
Was it a visit or satogaeri (coming home)? I wondered about this over the seven weeks I spent in Japan late last year, having arrived there just in time to watch England lose the last game of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Tokyo from a hospital room in Kyoto with an old friend recovering…
January made an auspicious start to the new year for Hidden Lakeland, with the launch of an exciting new partnership with English Lakes Hotels, for whom I’m now offering tailored tours for Japanese visitors direct from their website. You can read more about the partnership with English Lakes in a press release featured in the…
Are you in the UK for a winter break this O-shogatsu (Japanese New Year, from December 31 to January 4), happy to be on holiday, but missing some of the festivities of home – Nengajo, Joyo-no-kane, Hatsumode and O-sechi-ryōri? If so, please take comfort in a rather British New Year’s custom, by heading out on…
And that’s a cause for celebration, not dismay. Long gone are the days when the Lake District emptied over the winter. Instead, with the national park quieter and more itself again after the hustle and bustle of summer, it’s a great time to come. First, autumn, the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (John Keats)…
Celebrating Great Landscapes Week from Saturday 3 August to Friday 9 August 2019, landscape charity Friends of the Lake District reminded us that although Great Landscapes bring us opportunities to improve our physical, spiritual and mental well-being “they are also under threat and, in our busy lives, we can take for granted the true beauty…
J.M.W. Turner’s Buttermere Lake, with Part of Cromackwater, Cumberland, a Shower (1798) shows a tiny boat bobbing on Buttermere with a single ray of light cracking through dark and somber clouds over Crummock Water, glimpsed in the distance. Here is the hand of god in nature, where nature is majestic, awe-inspiring, and Romantic with a…
Levens Hall reopened to the public on 7 April 2019 after its annual winter break. As one of the more than twenty volunteer gardeners helping out at Levens Hall, I love nothing more than to get into the garden when it’s closed to help get it ready for the spring. There’s certainly plenty to do…
Jutting out into the ocean or stretching into a calm lake, jetties are about departures and arrivals, anticipation and travel. They are where we pause in the moment before a big adventure. Unless, that is, they ARE the journey, as is the case with Windermere Jetty museum, which was opened by HRH, The Prince of…