It's been a busy and very wet week for Jan and the volunteers in our #Ambleside woodlands - and there's an exciting new opportunity to help plant some wildflowers at Mazonwath. Read all about it: https://loom.ly/sm_pXiU#Ambleside #naturewriting #volunteering #LakeDistrict 📸 George Carr

The weather forecast for next week is very good but until then, another day of this to get through. Derwentwater, Cumbria today.

This is wonderful news and fantastic to see another piece of important research, begun as part of an assessed project on our MA programme, now reaching a wider audience and being showcased in this way. Many congratulations @suewilkinson.bsky.social 📚🍃

Newly advertised part-time Museum Assistant (Marketing & Content) job opportunity at The Armitt Museum & Library in Ambleside. Deadline for applications: 3rd October. See here for further details: uk.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=c...

It's here! Welcome to the Lancaster Litfest Autumn Weekend 2025, running 17-21 October and 18 November. Ft Sarah Hall, Simon Armitage, @oliverklangmead.bsky.social @mkhardywrites.com Xiaolu Guo @malikalnasir.bsky.social & more! Browse the full programme and get your tickets now! litfest.org

We're recruiting 🔔 Thanks to internal staff promotion, we're looking for a part time Administration Officer to join us in our Kendal Office. Check out our website for more details of this job: https://loom.ly/DnAm1-k #workforus #administration #recruiting

We're recruiting 🔔 Thanks to internal staff promotion, we're looking for a part time Administration Officer to join us in our Kendal Office. Check out our website for more details of this job: https://loom.ly/DnAm1-k #workforus #administration #recruiting

The first event in our 2025-26 Cultural Landscapes series will be a talk by @pollyrowena.bsky.social: ‘Companions of nature: sickbed consolations & mimic hootings', on Tue 7 Oct (6.30pm) at our Ambleside campus. Details & booking link for this free event here: www.ticketsource.co.uk/cultural-lan...

We'll have early paperbacks of #TheCompanyOfOwls at this event in Ambleside on 7th October - it's free to attend and open to anyone - come along if you can! #DorothyWordsworth #RomanticLegacies #LakeDistrictLit #CumbriaCulture #LakePoets #NatureWriting #Memoir #Biography #BookSky

🥂 It's time for another Rydal Mount Poetry Evening! 📖 This Saturday at 4pm, Kieron Winn will read from his new collection of poems, 'No Time', in our beautiful drawing room at Rydal Mount. Admission to the reading is free. Come along and hear poems about love, holidays, family, Grasmere, and home.

"[August] 24th, Sunday. A fine cool pleasant breezy day - walked in the wood in the morning ... I was ill in the afternoon and lay down - got up restored by a sound sleep." 🖋 📔 'Dorothy Wordsworth's Illustrated Lakeland Journals' (1991). 🍃 Dorothy's journal entry, 225 years ago today. .

Webinar ⚠️ Join our engagement lead Kay for a look at the troubling issue of litter and anti-social behaviour (such as fly camping and open fires) in the landscape. We'll share feedback from our recent survey and explore what can be done. Book here for free: https://loom.ly/Kkt8dPc

Wednesday this week…meet the author. Part of a series of fascinating free events in the Lake District. RT pls @lakedistrict.bsky.social @ucuuoc.bsky.social @lakedistrictnpa.bsky.social @lakesstiles.bsky.social

What happens if we do #history through #poetry? What new stories come into focus? Whose voices do we hear? Join us for the 2025 Creighton Lecture: historian Catherine Clarke & poet Hannah Lowe in conversation with IHR Director Claire Langhamer. All welcome. Book: www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Over on @grasdialectplays.bsky.social you can find lots of photos from fabulous readings - by members of the Lakeland Dialect Society - from the Grasmere Dialect Plays. Podcast coming soon: watch this space!

Will Dinah marry Gawin, or his nephew, Kit? (Act IV, "On Second Thoughts") Another picture from yesterday's readings from the Grasmere Dialect Plays at the Armitt Museum, Ambleside. L to R: John Campbell (Gawin), Phillip Gate (Kit), & Jean Scott-Smith (Dinah). Watch out for the podcast!

Remnants of the past revealed through grass - take a look at these parch marks at Mottisfont in Hampshire! Where the walls of former Medieval monastery buildings lie underground, the grass on top dries out quicker than the surrounding areas.

"...Her whose eyes Saw light through every wildering maze uncouth." 🖋 📕 'Suspiria', Edward Quillinan. 🎊 Happy 221st Birthday Dora Quillinan née Wordsworth!

📚 It is just one week until our next Poetry Evening at Rydal Mount! If you're 'in quest of known and unknown things' like our Dorothy, come along for an evening of poetry, history, and delicious gingerbread. 🎟 Tickets are available at: www.rydalmount.co.uk/wordsworth-p...

A wonderful start to the Wordsworth Summer Conference yesterday at Rydal Hall, with this gorgeous sight on the way home... ...is that perhaps gold at the end of the rainbow? 🌈 ✨️ Looking forward to welcoming the conference to RM on Saturday!

'...No longer, scattering to the heedless winds The vocal raptures of fresh poesy, Shall he frequent these precincts...' 🖊 📘 'The massy Ways, carried across these heights', William Wordsworth. 🖼 Ursula Hurst 📍The Summer House, Rydal Mount & Gardens

"- I love that house because it is The very Mountains' child." 🖊 📔 Dorothy Wordsworth, 'Grasmere - A Fragment'.

🖌 Last night I had the privilege of attending Wordsworth Grasmere's event 'The Time Lab: Museum Late'. This was a part of resident artist Stacey Rossouw's evolving exhibition exploring Wordsworth's 'spots of time' through multiple artistic mediums. 🥂Thank you to everyone for such a fantastic event!

In an age where walking is once again praised for its physical and mental benefits, #JaneAusten's fiction reminds us that these virtues are not new. Her characters have been walking for centuries. scroll.in/article/1084... ✍️Nada Saadaoui Via The Conversation

Time travel is real. It’s just hidden behind that creaky oak door labelled ‘staff only’.

'Yet still a lurking wish prevails, That, when from life we all have passed The Friends who loved thy Father's name On her's a thought may cast.' 🖊 📗 'To Dora Wordsworth', Dorothy Wordsworth, June 1832.

'With busy eyes I pierced the lane In quest of known and unknown things,' 🖊 Dorothy Wordsworth, 'Thoughts on my sick-bed' (1832) 🖼 Ursula Hurst

Do come along to this event on 13 August at the Armiit Museum in Ambleside. I guarantee it'll be fun! Tickets: www.armitt.com/event-direct... (scroll down)

"... For my lot Then was, within the famed Egerian Grot To sit and muse, fanned by its dewy air" 📔 'Composed at Rydal on May Morning', William Wordsworth 📍Rydal Hall

After the gorgeous (but scorching) weather of last week, it's lovely to feel Rydal returning to its usual cardigan weather - and yes, of course it has to be on theme 💐🌿⛅️

'Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot, Living with liberty on thee to gaze,' - William Wordsworth, 1842.

Have you come across piles of litter or the damage caused by barbecues or wild-fires? Complete our short survey here: www.friendsofthelakedistrict.org.uk/litter-survey

Thankyou @pollyrowena.bsky.social ! I can't help but recall my agent at the start of The Postal Paths project who said to me: "You're not actually going to walk all these paths are you?"! (P.S. I did walk them all- honest!)

'The wild cat of the wilderness', our Dora 🐈 Dora Wordsworth, the daughter of William, was referred to as a 'wild cat' by close family friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Our cat, who was named after Dora, embodies the same spirit 🦁. Source: Pamela Woof, 'Dora Wordsworth, Artist, 1804-1847'.

In other news, I'm running a cyanotype printing workshop at the Armitt Museum in Ambleside on Sunday. It's going to be far too hot outside so do this instead ;-) armitt-library-and-museum-centre.arttickets.org.uk/armitt-libra...

'Not a window lets in light, But through flowers clustering bright;' - Extract from 'A Poet's Home', Maria Jane Jewsbury, 1825.

A wee bit of wisteria blooming outside Dorothy and Dora's bedrooms this morning 🌄

What a fantastic couple of days at University of Cumbria's Research NOW! Conference. It was wonderful to watch colleagues present their research, including the fabulous Abi Palmer and her work on Anne Lister. Thank you to everyone who attended - particularly the organisers and presenters 👏👏👏

How about this… my absolute all time favourite restaurant in the universe 😎😎😎

If you are thinking about postgraduate study in the fields of literary, heritage, environmental & cultural studies, why not find out more about our MA Literature, Romanticism & the Lake District at an online course talk by our programme leader on Wed 30 July at 6pm www.cumbria.ac.uk/events/open-...

Good luck this week to Gritstone author Eileen Jones @cumbriapr.bsky.social whose book Loughrigg: Tales of a Small Mountain gritstonecoop.co.uk/product/loug... is shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year awards in Penrith.

#coop day at @foxandgoose.org coop pub in #hebdenbridge. And @gritstonebooks.bsky.social is here too. Britain's first author run coop. @coopnews.bsky.social @coopsmark.bsky.social @cooperativesuk.bsky.social @coopstudiesjournal.bsky.social @cumbriapr.bsky.social @chrisgoddardmap.bsky.social

Another accurate journal entry from Dorothy, although this time from 223 years ago today. The roses at Rydal are also not battered (but neither are they baked, or fried🌹) 'Dorothy Wordsworth's Illustrated Lakeland Journals', intro. by Rachel Trickett (Diamond Books, 1991)

Call for Papers, please share! “Power Couples? Collaborations at work and at home, c.1750-1914” workshop to be held at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany 11-13 May 2026. Deadline for expression of interest 1 Sep 2025. Please see more info in the attached & email me if any questions.

Some wet bookshop adjacent wildlife today, including some damp young browsers, but those jackdaws are eagerly eyeing Grasmere gingerbread so we need not feel too sorry...

It's National Hay Meadows Day on Saturday so it's the perfect time to go and visit our haymeadows - at High Borrowdale and at Mazonwath, Little Asby, where we are taking part in Cumbria Wildlife Trust's meadow seed repository scheme - to provide places where rare upland meadow plants still grow.  

Dorothy Wordsworth, on this day 200 years ago: " - at 1/2 past 10 set off in Cart to Coniston - took up M[ary] at Mrs Luff's - Miss E Dowling & Miss Woodville in Road - cool, & rather dull - sun breaks out - fine lights on hills..." 'Dorothy Wordsworth's Rydal Journals' (Mason, 2025).

A walk down memory lane (aka The Strand) this week. It's 19 years since our High Court case seeking legal recognition of our marriage in England & Wales - bailii.org/ew/cases/EWH... - was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice. @kitzingercelia.bsky.social

There is still time to sign up for my online talk tomorrow evening about our very special MA (which can be studied either full time or part time). See link below for details and to book your place 📚🍃