This is not a red squirrel ...

Our stay in the Lake District is coming to an end, and sadly I haven’t yet managed to photograph (or even see) a red squirrel. To remedy this we decided to return to Allan Bank because we know it’s a place where red squirrels are frequently to be found, and where we have seen them in past years (even though we didn’t see any on our previous visit a couple of weeks ago). 

We know the best time to see them is in the morning, so today we arrived not long after opening time. Sadly, they decided not to visit this morning!  Another keen photographer was also waiting with his wife to see them. He told me he might come back about 4.00 pm, which is when they often return, and while we were chatting his wife told me about a bird song/identifier app called Merlin, which was running constantly on her phone and recording all the birdsong around.

Smithers and I walked down into Grasmere and had lunch again at Mathilde’s, then we walked a short way out of the village to the Wordsworth Centre, which has been newly extended since we were last there. We looked around the wonderful museum and then round the delightful Dove Cottage gardens, full of bluebells, rhododendrons, yellow poppies, aquilegia, bracken, cow parsley and London Pride (saxifraga x urbium).

It’s little wonder that Wordsworth described the Dove Cottage garden as ‘the loveliest spot that man hath ever found’ – but it’s a shame that his description has been taken out of context and applied to many other places in the Lake District, however beautiful it is.

We then walked up the Easedale Road to Goody Bridge, a favourite walk of ours, returning on the offchance via Allan Bank around 4.00 pm and arriving at the same time as the photographer we’d met earlier, but the squirrels had obviously gone on their holidays too and were once more nowhere to be found.

The main photo is the old billiard room in the grounds at Allan Bank, and in extras you can see the view over to the fells through a stained glass window of the billiard room, Dove Cottage and finally a view from Goody Bridge looking up the Easedale.


A Farewell (written to the garden-orchard at Dove Cottage)

Farewell, thou little nook of mountain-ground,
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair
Of that magnificent temple which doth bound
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare;
Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,
The loveliest spot that man hath ever found,
Farewell! – we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care,
Thee, and the cottage which thou dost surround.

William Wordsworth