Dove Cottage entry included
Wordsworth Afternoon Tour —
Dove Cottage, Grasmere and Rydal
The poems, in the places they came from, in the afternoon light
Dove Cottage entry included
The poems, in the places they came from, in the afternoon light
Duration
3½ hourshalf day, afternoon
Dove Cottage
Insideentry included
Group
Max 7guests
Departs
2:00pmWindermere · back by 5:30pm
Pickup
3 pointsWindermere to Ambleside
Dora's Field
Rydaldaffodils in spring
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google
£79per person, all included
Check availability & book Choose your date · small groups onlyOften sells out. We don't run every tour every day, and Dove Cottage entry is booked ahead — so book early for the afternoon you want.
William Wordsworth spent most of his life within a few miles of Grasmere and Rydal, composing aloud as he went, with Dorothy writing it all down. The places on this tour are not a museum to a poet. They are the landscape the poems came out of.
“We’re so glad we weren’t driving.” Our guests often tell us so.
The roads around Grasmere and Rydal are narrow and busy. Your driver watches the road, so you can watch his country.
Experienced, qualified drivers who know every lane and bend, in every kind of weather.
No car parks to find, no tickets to buy. Dove Cottage is booked and waiting.
A line read at the spot that prompted it is a different thing from a line read in a classroom. Your guide brings the poems, and Dorothy's journals, to the places they came from.
Entry is in the price and booked ahead — no queue, no ticket to find. The small whitewashed cottage at Town End, where he wrote some of the finest poems in the language.
Dora's Field at Rydal, the daffodils he planted in memory of his daughter Dora. Most visitors to the Lakes have never heard of it. In spring it stops people in their tracks.
Someone who lives in Cumbria, knows Wordsworth's life and work, and introduces the poems through the landscape and the life rather than as texts to be studied.
A small minibus and a guide who can hear your question and answer it. In a cottage with rooms this small, seven makes all the difference.
The Lake District is a World Heritage Site partly because of the writers it inspired — and Wordsworth, more than anyone, is the reason people came.
Not a museum to a poet — the landscape the poems came out of, with someone who knows which line belongs where.What the afternoon is for
We collect from three points at set times, and drop you back at the same point. Times are approximate — please be there ten minutes before your pickup time.
Windermere Railway Station
Outside the railway station, Windermere LA23 1AH
what3words ///spreading.inflame.removes
2:00pmback around 5:30pm
Bowness Pier
At the Windermere Lake Cruises ticket office, Bowness Pier, Bowness-on-Windermere LA23 3HQ
what3words ///upsetting.sport.mash
back around
Ambleside Library
Outside the library, Kelsick Road, Ambleside LA22 0BZ
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back around
Maps and directions for each pickup point
Tap a place to see it. The route can change on the day.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
The afternoon runs the way the day suggests, so the places don't always come in this order.
01
Dove Cottage
The loveliest spot
02
St Oswald's
The family graves
03
Grasmere
His lake and valley
04
Rydal
Thirty-seven years
05
Dora's Field
For his daughter
“The loveliest spot that man hath ever found.” The small whitewashed cottage at Town End where William and Dorothy lived from 1799 to 1808, and where he wrote some of the finest poems in the language. Entry is included and booked ahead. The rooms are tiny, and that is the point.
St Oswald's, where William, Dorothy and Mary lie beneath plain stones, with the River Rothay running past. The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop is a few yards away, and when the queue allows there is time to buy some. Your guide will tell you who else is here.
The steep little field beside Rydal church that he bought when he thought he might have to leave Rydal Mount. After his daughter Dora died in 1847, the family planted it with daffodils in her memory. In spring it is extraordinary.
Rydal Mount, his home from 1813 until he died in 1850, is temporarily closed, so we stop at the gates and your guide tells its story there. Below it, Rydal church, where the family worshipped. The other half of his life.
A small stone viewing house in the grounds of Rydal Hall, built in 1668 to frame the waterfall like a painting — exactly the kind of view the Romantics prized. When time allows. Almost nobody knows it is there.
Not a lecture. A line read where it was written, a page of Dorothy's journal where she wrote it, and the daffodils — the Ullswater ones and the Rydal ones — and how the two stories connect.
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google, where you can read every review, unedited.
★★★★★"I have read Wordsworth since school and thought I knew these places. This tour showed me I knew almost nothing. The Grot at Rydal Hall was completely unknown to me, and standing there while our guide read from The Prelude is something I will not forget."
Elizabeth F. · Oxford
★★★★★"As an English literature teacher, I was apprehensive about a guided literary tour. I need not have worried. Our guide knew things I did not know and made connections I had not made. The churchyard and Dora's Field made it unforgettable."
Caroline M. · Edinburgh
The same tour, run privately: your own guide and minibus, collected from your accommodation in Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Grasmere or Oxenholme, on the date that suits you, with nobody in the minibus you didn't bring. Well-behaved dogs, and children under seven, by arrangement.
With six or seven of you, a private afternoon costs less per person than the scheduled tour.
£467 per group up to 7 guests · half day
Enquire about a private Wordsworth afternoonThis tour can be added to, or adapted as part of, a bespoke tour — tailor-made for each individual booking, around the places and the people you most want to see.
Find out about bespoke toursEvery tour is led by one of a small team of local guides — Tim, Gillian, Sandra and Steve — who live in Cumbria and know Wordsworth's country well. The team rotates, so we can't promise a particular guide. We are based in Kendal, our minibuses are licensed for private hire, and we are fully insured.
This page was checked by Phil in .
Photographs: Strobilomyces (CC BY-SA 3.0), Andrew Curtis (CC BY-SA 2.0), Brian Clift (CC BY-SA 2.0), Bill Boaden (CC BY-SA 2.0), Peter S (CC BY-SA 2.0), User:Diliff (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Placeholder photography — to be replaced with our own.
