Silver Threads Among the Gold

 

My lakeside journal 

Towards the end of September when we were expecting the news of nationwide second lockdown after the resurgence of the virus in the country, there were a few keyed-up days with the politicians arguing about the efficacy of lockdown as a tool of controlling the virus. Up to the last minute, I was not sure if we would be able to go to the Lake District in the present circumstances. While lying awake in the small hours of the morning, I expected the worst scenario where our holiday would be cancelled. Packing my suitcase was the last thing on my mind and I left it to the last minute.

When I booked this holiday in the beginning of the year in January, my trip to England (the first time in 11 years) was supposed to be something of annus mirabilis – a year of wonder as it would be a year in which my lifelong dream of visiting Brantwood, Ruskin’s house came true. 

But there was a big question mark hanging over my dream; how this pandemic will affect all sorts of things we usually take for granted. It reminds me of my childhood where one waits for the arrival of summer holidays with a sense of longing. What if the holidays might never come (the main threat that hanged over me as a child was being sent away to the Scouts group)?   

But God moves in a mysterious way. When the official news came out at the beginning of October there was no travel ban, locally or nationally, I decided to pack my suitcase very quickly and we decided to move as swiftly as possible because we did not want to be stranded like wartime refugees in south of the border with no clear way out if we were required to self-isolate for fourteen days in England.

Every journey we take in life is personal. Amidst all the upheavals and disruptions in the way we live our lives during the year of pandemic, it is a blessing to have this brief refuge, bringing a sense of release and replacing all the uncertainties and anxieties with a sense of spiritual calm. It opens my heart with the sublime beauty of the nature. I want to duplicate this experience by reaching back to my memories of this holiday when I write these words in my travel journal. 

My first time back to England after a decade. I am so delighted that we are finally on our way to the Lake District. I asked Gordon to tell me when he sees the sign "Welcome to England" on the motorway. 

When the day of our trip came, we were actively encouraged by the beautiful sunrise. We packed the car and left home very early in the morning. Gordon wanted to miss the rush hours traffics on the motor way. He said that if we aimed to leave home by 8 am in the morning, we should be in Cumbria after 3 o’ clock in the afternoon since we would be stopping a couple of times to break up the journey.

Leaving home always brought me a melancholy sadness which was no ordinary homesickness but a persistent condition of an exile who always possesses a sense of loss and longing. I remember a line in Oliver Goldsmith’s poem, The Traveller that goes:

 Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,/My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee.

During the journey, we listen to the quintessentially English songs by Roger Quilter performed by Benjamin Luxon (Baritone) and David Willison (Piano). 

It was a bright sunny morning. The mist was slowly lifting on the hillside. There was a sense of timelessness in the morning’s stillness. It was difficult to tell that we are in the middle of the catastrophic event with this virus when I looked at the roads. Gordon was ‘a little weary’ about travelling in the time of pandemic but he had a sense of rather noble intention: to fulfil my dream of seeing Brantwood, the professor’s house on the shores of Coniston Water, surrounded by the majestic hills of the Lake District.

We listened to Benjamin Luxon singing quintessentially English songs by Roger Quilter during the car journey. I looked out of the window and watched all the autumn leaves turning into the colours of orange and crimson in the dazzling autumn sunlight.  

I asked Gordon to tell me when we were closer to the border between Scotland and England. I have always been fascinated by the borders and frontiers. Like the German Romantic artist, Caspar David Friedrich who tends to bring his subject right to the edge of the land or the cliff to experience the sublime, the border crossing can be a spiritual experience.

 So much for the excitement of crossing a frontier, I fell asleep and by the time I woke up, it was almost too late to record the welcome sign to England!!

Although I was prepared to record the moment we slipped across the border with my camera, it was just a blur when the time came. I fell asleep momentarily, and when Gordon told me to look up the road sign saying “England”, it was too late to record it with my camera. My fuzzy experience of border crossing reminded me of not as a metaphor but a true parallel with the conflicting government’s rules about this virus since we no longer know where the boundaries are.    

We stopped to have our packed sandwiches for lunch after we passed the border. We looked at the cars on the road and we noticed so many caravans. Gordon wondered if they were all like the characters from Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” who have fled for awhile to the countryside in order to escape from the Black Death in the city of Florence.

I had to keep an eye on the map of where we were going. It's far away from the tourists' destinations. 

I was very happy in the sense of recovered freedom to be back to England after many years of absence. Gordon knows the Lake District very well since he spent most of his childhood holidays in the Lake District with his family. His families are all keen hikers and mountaineers. Although he can rely on his memories on the road, he asked me to keep a close eye on the map to make sure that we were not sidetracked.

After we passed Carlisle and Kendal, I started to notice a change of scenery. When we left home in the morning, the temperature was a single figure 9 degree. As we approached the Lake District, a soft, delicious warmth pervaded, and I looked at the temperature in the car and it was a double figure 12 degree. To be in England in the early autumn is a magical experience.

The sky was sapphire blue, the fields were golden and the rocks and the mountains in the distance were rust-red fringed with emerald green trees, reflecting their outlines on the blue water of the lake. It was as though the soft English air had infected me already. I was fully alert and bewitched by the beauty of the hills and the dramatic landscape. It had proven to be far more beautiful than my naïve imagination of the Lake District in my mind’s eye. It is the land of Heart’s Desire and earthly paradise.  

The landscape is breathtakingly beautiful. I can understand why the Romantic travellers, mystics and poets were drawn to this area, and why they felt a profound reverence towards nature. I can feel the presence of a divine being who is in charge here as a celestial conductor. Everywhere you look is undiminished glory of nature. The mountain air is incredibly pure and full of oxygen from the trees. 

From the very beginning we wanted to stay well away from the tourists and it was one of the reasons why we planned this holiday in early autumn. With the threat of coronavirus, it is more sensible for us to avoid going to the crowded and well-known places mentioned in the tourist’s brochures. 

Sapphire blue skies, sun-dappled water and it is a miracle, there are no autumn tears (translation: rain). If you have a limited budget, it is cheaper to travel to this area in the autumn although there are no signs of daffodils, synonymous with the Lake District, and there is no guarantee with the weather. But autumn is much quieter after the tourists have gone, and one feels as though one has the whole place to oneself.     

If you are travelling on a budget, the prices are cheaper in this time of the year. It is a small sacrifice not to see the bluebells and the daffodils which are the staple symbols of the Lake District in the tourist’s brochures. But one can always make up for it with the beauty of autumn; the mosaic colours of the trees, the lakes lay placid below the pristine blue sky and the sheep run across the fields to greet the visitors. Everywhere you look is a breathtaking beauty.   

Seathwaite, Duddon Valley, England

We turn our car here to The Langdales to go up Wrynose Pass. Gordon pre-warned me about the hairpin turns, twisting steep mountain roads, single narrow lanes, severe bends, and it is not for the faint-hearted. I can see why not many tourists come to this part of the Lake District. It is not very easy to get there.  

Gordon organised the booking for our holiday cottage. He chose the idyllic village, Seathwaite in the Duddon Valley, located between Eskdale and Langdale, a secluded corner of the Lake District that is not well-known and less-frequented by the tourists.

Gordon listens to his favourite music by Gerald Finzi while we are driving up to the mountain. Finzi's music is very pastoral and soothing. 

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” John Muir (1838 – 1914, Scottish-American naturalist)

Wrynose Pass. It gives me a sense of elation and acrophobia (fear of heights) at the same time. The higher we go up, the more it becomes apparent that the landscape is a wild, rugged, sublime and heart-stopping beauty. The streams and rivers twist around the valleys like silver threads among the rocks that turn gold when they catch the sunlight.

Everyone on the road is very considerate. Everyone shows their hands to say thanks. A sense of fairness is a true British virtue. Big cars give a priority to the little cars, and no one complains for having to wait by the roadside if there is another car coming down from the opposite direction. 

After we passed the sign “Little Langdale”, he did warn me about Wrynose Pass where the roads are incredibly steep, narrow and winding – not for the faint-hearted travellers who might be unaware of the dramatic and rough terrain with a very tight, single-track road with unforgiving rugged stone walls. It requires a lot of patience, skill and tact with other drivers when navigating the car with the constant switchbacks on this road. But the stunning views are definitely worth it.

At the Duddon Valley end, our SAT-NAV took us to the wrong turning, as Gordon put it “a scenic route”, and it took us awhile to find our holiday cottage although Seathwaite is a little hamlet. During our final leg of the journey, the fields stretched away towards the rising hills; the flocks of sheep here and there dotted around, and the white-washed farm cottages lay calmly and stoically, which exudes a kind of rural charm that concealed nothing.   

Here we have taken the wrong turning (The lady on SAT-NAV is confused and has an emotional meltdown in the Duddon Valley!!). Now we are truly lost, going around in a circle, and we are nowhere near our holiday cottage. Gordon jokingly said: "Don't worry. All roads lead to Rome."   

Just before crossing this "weak bridge", a Land Rover in front of our car broke down after one of the tyres suffered a puncture. I thought the road to the Promised Land is never straightforward. But the owner of the Land Rover was gracious enough to pull his car aside so that we could go ahead. We spoke to him if he needed any help but he said that he would be fine and that it was a spot of bother (an understatement?). He had a new tyre at the back of his car, and he would immediately change it. Thank god for a new spare tyre. I don't think that the RAC would ever manage to get to this place, in the middle of nowhere, if he had to do a call-out for some roadside assistance.  

By the grace of God, I saw the sign of our holiday cottage on the roadside while Gordon drove ahead. 

We turned into a private lane and we finally arrived. The cottage and its location is just perfect. It stands on its own in the middle of the fields, surrounded by the mountains and hills on each side and it is utterly peaceful. We emptied the car and put the kettle on for our cup of tea.  

After we crossed the narrow bridge, late in the afternoon we arrived just before 5 pm when I saw the little sign of the name of our holiday cottage by the grace of God on the road side.  We turned our car into the private lane leading to a solitary building presented itself, nestled among the fields - the most charming cottage called Undercragg. This lovely cottage is not just an ordinary cottage. It is steeped in history for its association of being the birthplace of the Rev Robert Walker who was born at this cottage in 1710.

The views from the cottage. Isn't it the most idyllic view of England? 

This is an old barn outside. It has the best view of the sunset. 

Herdwick Sheep on the English green pastures of plenty right at the doorstep

What a lovely surprise the owner left a home baked cake in the kitchen! Most thoughtful! 

The cottage has low beams and ceilings. Both Gordon's and my height are under 5 feet 7 inches. So, there is no problem for us. But we love the sign and the bunting to remind the visitors to lower their heads. It's good to be humble.   

The owner also left a bottle of wine on the dining table, milk in the fridge and tea and coffee in the cupboard. This thoughtful and welcoming gesture is exemplary. 

A real fireplace. This is so rare and absolutely divine! Gordon lit the fire as it was getting chilly outside when we sat down to have our first cup of tea. 

The cottage is steeped in history for its association of being the birthplace of the Rev Robert Walker who was born at this cottage in 1710. I can imagine him sitting by this fire and writing his Sunday sermons. 

Rev Walker sounds like the most enterprising and pious man. It is not unusual that in the remote rural communities one has to be practical and entrepreneurial in order to make ends meet. Rev Walker was not only performing the services and the duties of the church but also he involved with teaching, running an alehouse from the rectory (can you imagine?), working on the farm and spinning wool (his sheep shearing stone lies at the entrance to the porch at Seathwaite church, which we went to visit later in the week). Furthermore, there are also literary associations with this fascinating man. Wordsworth published a memoir about him in 1820 and also included a reference to him - ‘Wonderful Walker’ – in his 1814 poem, The Excursion.    

Lovely laces and crochets, dried lavenders and pot-pourri dishes in the cottage are all inexpressibly nostalgic.  

There are three bedrooms, one double and two single rooms at the cottage. 

I love this single bedroom with teddy bears. The view from this window is absolutely stunning. I brought this gorgeous patchwork quilt from home as my travel/picnic rug. It gave me a touch of familiarity when I used it as my bedspread or draped it onto the sofa in the sitting room as a comfort blanket when I read by the fire.  

We thought they were happy to greet us but they turned out to be street salesmen. "Excuse me. Have you got a minute, sir? May I ask which energy company do you use?" 

Both Gordon and I fell in love with the cottage. Inside, the decor was homely, cosy and tastefully decorated with period furniture. It didn’t feel rustic but more English romantic style with soft pastel chintzy sofas, lace tablecloths and ruffled pillows, which all contribute to a whimsical and nostalgic environment. 

We also liked the fact that there is no internet, mobile reception (but there is a landline telephone in the house) and the presence of digital technology in the house was very minimal so we can actually enjoy the silence, talking to each other and reading to our heart’s content. It is the great irony of our age that social media and communication technology actually lead to isolation and lack of communication. At the cottage without the internet and mobile phone, time seemed elastic and an abiding silence became something we looked forward to listening every day.   

No internet and no mobile phone reception at the cottage. We thought it was perfect for our retreat. It made us forget about the anxiety-inducing news about the pandemic. For emergency, there is a landline telephone in the hallway and the honesty box if you make a call. 

The novelist, Alexander McCall Smith is fond of quoting Proust when he complained that “steamships insulted the dignity of distance”. One could only imagine what Proust would have said about the social media – perhaps, it is an insult to the art of conversation?

The morning sunrises are very soft and dreamy. The whole world seems to be rotating in a different rhythm and much slower tempo. Time becomes elastic here. 

The first night at the cottage was the most peaceful. I felt so far away from the outside world and there was no light pollution. I opened my curtain and looked at the stars which seemed to link with one another like a chain of white crocuses to decorate the dark sky. I drifted into the realm of slumbers with the enveloping sounds of streams, waterfalls, fields, mountains and woods.    

How amazing it would be to be able to wake up with this picturesque view every morning the rest of one's life!

The views from the cottage. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive..." William Wordsworth

Waking up in the morning was just as serene as falling asleep at nigh time. Each morning brought us a sense of enchanted happiness. It was very dreamy and soft at sunrise, which erased my memory of a damp and grey Scottish weather. But of course, Cumbria can be very wet throughout the year. But it was a pure luck that during the time we stayed in Seathwaite, there was only one day of drizzly rain. The rest of the time the sun came out miraculously and it was as warm as a day in May.  

Gordon cooked hearty English breakfast before we went out for a long walk in the country.

I brought this tea cosy from home. Tea cosy is an outmoded item and not very easy to find these days. How do people keep their teapots warm? 

"There are two opposite directions we can walk from the cottage. We call our walks; Mountain Way and Church Way. Today, we decide to go to Mountain Way." Quote from my journal entry.  

This beautiful farmhouse must have the most bucolic view in England. How I love this village, Seathwaite in the Duddon Valley. It is the most picturesque of all.  

Autumn is not only a season of mists but also a season of wistfulness. It reminds us the passage of time and the transient nature of our existence. But Wordsworth finds some consolation when he mediates on what remains behind: "Though nothing can bring back the hour/Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;/We will grieve not, rather find/Strength in what remains behind;" Perhaps, what remains behind are the remembrance of spring and summer and other resilient things that we can't see underneath the surface and below the ground waiting for the eventual coming of spring.   

I realised that I have taken so many pictures of farm gates. I have never paid too much attention to them until I have read J.H.B. Peel's poetic essay "Leaning on a gate" in one of his books called "New Country Talk". In the age of digital and virtual technology, we seem to have, more than ever, a desire to touch something solid and something that has been built to last for a long time. 

I am inspired by Mr Peel's essays and nature writing. According to Mr Peel, a metal gate is “lifeless”, “cheap and nasty” and “mock the wayfarer seeking a shelf for his map and his sandwiches.” Whereas a timber gate is perfect for a man “who likes to lean his elbows on a ledge while admiring the view or pondering the verities. He wrote: “A gate can be both solitary and companionable; intrinsically contemplative and conversational. At dawn it supports Wordsworth’s traveller, “On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life/Musing in solitude…””

This is Church Way. One of the benefits of coming to this direction is seeing the roaring streams and tumbling waterfalls, immortal trees and the church where Rev Walker used to work and his vicarage. 

An old tree like this always makes me speechless with awe. It is a true symbol of England. How did it survive through the centuries in the face of wars, famines, plagues and social calamities? Hermann Hesse aptly described trees as "sanctuaries" in his short essay from his book, Wandering: Notes and Sketches. Hesse wrote: "Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

No matter how rural or remote the location, you can always find a letterbox to send a postcard.

Holy Trinity Church where Rev Walker used to conduct the Sunday Services. 

Here is his lovely vicarage on the right. These winding roads in Seathwaite are very charming and poetic. 

Holy Trinity Church, Seathwaite, Duddon Valley (South Lakeland)

The church door is open and I walk in to say a private prayer. May god guide us a safe way out from this pandemic and watch over each and everyone of us. Inside the church, the air was thick with tradition and sanctity of a High Church. 

There is a stone outside the entrance where Rev Walker used to sit when he was clipping his sheep.

As in Proust’s novel, In Search of Lost Time, in which the narrator mentions that there are the two different routes of country walk that he and his parents choose; Swann’s Way (the Méséglise way), and the Guermantes way, both containing a quality of romance and mystery in the scenes of natural beauty, 

Gordon and I named our daily walks - Church Way that leads to Rev Walker’s Church if you turn left or Mountain Way if you turn right. Gordon loved both ways but I preferred Mountain Way which became for me a Promised Land, a symbol of a happiness which could only be renewed again in the daily contemplation in solitude. 

An old picture of the cottage on the wall. It has not changed a great deal over the centuries. If Wordsworth or Ruskin happened to walk past this direction of Seathwaite today, they would still recognise this cottage and its surrounding landscape.  

Ruskin's Lakeland Paradise, Brantwood, Coniston, England

Langdale Village Shop. This is the place where we do most of our food shopping here. It's our lifeline during our stay at the cottage. We came here to shop before we headed to Brantwood. 

The city exodus is gathering pace ever since lockdown began to ease. The traffic can be slow when you go into the tourists' areas. The local newspapers talk about having "Staycation boom" in Cumbria. At the same time, there are alarming news about the virus cases spike among the tourists who are escaping to the country. We took extra care to avoid the crowds and busy areas and kept washing our hands. 

It was the day when my recurrent dream of visiting the master’s house, Brantwood came true. It may sound cliché to use the phrase ‘my bucket list’ and strike a familiar note but the dream of seeing Ruskin’s house, the only house that he ever owned, was something that I wanted to fulfil in my lifetime. Although Cumbria is not so far away from Scotland, it remained out of reach and an unimaginable goal. 

Brantwood seemed so near and so far at the same time. Over the years, my friends (Gordon included), who have been to see Brantwood, sent me their postcards and books which gave me a small consolation for every year when I failed to make my trip to Ruskin’s house.

Last year, I seriously planned to go to mark the 200^th anniversary of his birth (on 8^th of February 2019) but I became caught up ‘in the world’ and the destiny had other plans. I was very disappointed that I could not go but I made a promise to myself that the year 2020 will be my landmark year, the year of  high endeavour, and the outlook began to seem more hopeful until the plague had arrived.

The day when my dreams came true. Here I am at last in Ruskin's garden. I am thrilled beyond measure: seeing a place where Ruskin lived during his last years for the first time.   

Ruskin remained a shadowy figure in my student years of reading art history at the university. I remembered reading the extracts of his writings in two courses in particular – one was about the Pre-Raphaelites and the other was about Whistler. One of my lecturers, a Marxist who wore a battered trilby, dismissed Ruskin as “fuddy-duddy”. 

It was only after I graduated his writings came to me by chance (the first book that I bought and read by him from the second bookshop was “Mornings in Florence”. I was mesmerised by his luminous style of writing and finely shaped prose in which there is an underlying quality of deep contemplation when looking at a work of art, a quality that is lacking in most art history writings that I read in my university years. By the time, I read his autobiography, "Praeterita" (some scholars refer to it as Ruskin's “Remembrance of Things Past”), I became a true convert.  

One of the books that I brought to the cottage was Ruskin's autobiography, one of my favourites, Praeterita. Sadly, not many people read his writings anymore. The only thing he is known for these days is his failed marriage to Effie Gray! 

The views from Ruskin's garden, located on the hill, overlooking Coniston Water are absolutely stunning. He experimented his new ideas in his garden, inspired by Boticelli's illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy. For Ruskin the role of the philosopher and the gardener are intertwined.  

Ruskin's Seat. "I am at work in my little garden amongst the hills conscious of little more than the dust of the earth, more at peace than of old..." John Ruskin 

Ruskin's coach. He also travelled with a coach full of books. A man after my own heart!

Ruskin bought Brantwood from William James Linton, artist, poet, botanist and political writer and he paid the asking price of £1,500. Ruskin was recovering from serious illness at Matlock in Derbyshire and he bought the house without viewing. Ruskin came and visited the Lake District with his parents when he was young and he was familiar with the area. In addition to sixteen acres of land, Ruskin wrote the house also came with “five acres of rock and moor, a streamlet, and I think on the whole the finest view I know in Cumberland…”  

How I wish I could go inside the house after coming to this close. But it was not meant to be. My heart sank when I saw the little sign saying "Closed". With Covid restrictions, I suppose that it is a wise decision to close it to keep everyone safe from this virus. 

I sat on the bench outside his dining room and I thought about Ruskin's final years and his words. I also thought about other Ruskin scholars (W. G. Collingwood, James Dearden, Tim Hilton, Van Akin Burd) who might have come here and looked at the same view that I am looking now. 

We had a delicious lunch at the café in front of Ruskin's portrait as a dashing young man. Even as a young man, one can see from this portrait that he showed what my grandmother might have called "great promise". The café staff are very friendly and attentive. The food (I had Thai broth/vegetable soup) is absolutely divine. 

Ruskin was a true Renaissance polymath and his intellectual interests were, to say the least, diverse (art, architecture, education, geology, economics, theology, etymology and many more). It is an ideal of education we seem to have lost in our generation. 

His genius is too dazzling to contemplate for us. He made use of all these fields of learning when he began to write and lecture to his audience. I simply do not know when he finds time to eat his dinner. George Steiner was probably right when he once said that the Victorians never slept.

When we arrived back to the cottage, I wrote my travel journal by the fire.

Here are a few images of what it looks like outside the cottage in the spring and summer. How I long to come back here during the spring and the summer and have another opportunity to see Ruskin's house. But who knows what the future holds?  

That evening we listened to the haunting melodrama (words by Tennyson), Enoch Arden, music composed by Strauss. Many years ago, I first heard the version by Claude Rains and Glenn Gould on a LP record. But I actually prefer this recent recording of Lucy Parham (Piano) and Henry Goodman (Narrator). Henry Goodman has a calm, charming and rich voice.

I brought a couple of my old favourites for my reading. Woolf's intensely English novel and her last work, Between the Acts. This short novel by Woolf has everything - a genius for evoking landscape, a sense of character and an insightful apprehension of human relationships. The other book that I brought from home is Dorothy Wordsworth's The Grasmere Journals. Her journals always give me inspiration for my reflective journal writing. 

Gordon brought the only book with him and it's called Mount Analogue by the French novelist, René Daumal. 

I shall never forget that moonlit night. 

Langdale Chase Hotel, Windermere, England

At the end of our holiday, Gordon took me to an afternoon tea at this hotel. It was a warm sunny afternoon with a gentle breeze from the lake Windermere. 

On the last day of our holiday, Gordon took me to an afternoon tea at Langdale Chase Hotel, an elegant and stately Victorian mansion on the banks of Lake Windermere.

While looking out of the window from the hotel, I'm reminded by this poem by Keats. I love and worship Keats. 

"To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,- to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament."

I love their blue velvet sofas in the drawing room. The atmosphere of this hotel belongs to a different epoch, a calmer and gentler time, a bygone era of gentility.  

It has the rarefied atmosphere where the afternoon tea is still served on the thick snow-white linen tablecloths. Had the novelist, Anita Brookner chosen her heroine, Edith Hope to go into exile in England instead of Switzerland, she would have chosen to stay at Langdale Chase Hotel rather than the Hotel du Lac.

There is a grand piano in the drawing room. I can picture the French pianist, Marcelle Meyer (1897-1958) playing Ravel's Miroirs on this piano while we are contemplating the lake. 

This is the type of hotel where Edith Hope, a heroine from Anita Brookner's novel, Hotel du Lac might have stayed if only the novelist had chosen England as her setting instead of Switzerland. 

While drinking my afternoon tea, I could feel the aura of the Hotel du Lac described by Brookner: “…a dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons of an earlier era…What it had to offer was a mild form of sanctuary…a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued…And its situation on the lake was agreeable.”  

I shall never forget that day with the glorious afternoon sunshine and the bracing October breeze. The hotel and the garden seemed to be deserted and the whole surrounding was tinged with the aura of a languid afternoon. The echoing sound of the engine from the cruise boats on the lake can be heard from the drawing room.     

A grand entrance hall

The whole landscape is flooded in the slanting afternoon light. 

Gordon said that the deck chairs are a bit too optimistic. But I was too busy looking at how the colour of the deck chair is matching the colour of beautiful hydrangea. 

There is a large mansion across the lake. It looks just like a place from the fairytale.

Such serenity...Who could have believed that it is a time of pandemic and a hard battle is being fought a few miles away to halt the advance of the pestilence?     

Everything is incredibly calm and quiet here. The sunlight dazzles on the water. I sit on the deck chair in the sun and watch the boats on the lake. Every now and then a bird flies across the lake, causing ripples on the surface. I can hear Marcelle Meyer's playing Ravel's Miroirs on the piano in my ears. 

I think that the test of a good holiday is whether you feel wistful and sorry when it is time to leave. We all know that our holidays always come with an end date but breaking away from this brief but heavenly period of hushed solitude and re-acclimatising with the changes of tempo will not be easy. But I feel sure that as the time goes on, the memory of my holiday in Seathwaite will lose none of its magic. 

This is a rush hour.

 Surrounded by the undulating fells, one can't help being lulled into philosophical reveries. “Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.” From Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tzu. As a Buddhist, I always find myself asking the meanings behind these enigmatic lines from Lao Tzu. But I was able to see its profound meaning during my time in Seathwaite. When your mind is no longer chattering and wrestling with the desires and the anxieties, you can appreciate the true beauty, the mystery and the very presence of the divinity in the midst of creation. It has been a blessing to both learn and experience that.

I will treasure many great moments from my time there. For me, it is as if I have found a spiritual home in Seathwaite. I feel all the vanishing beauties of the world, that has been dormant for too long, have come back to me, complemented by a kind of peace that is contagious and that needs to be shared with others.

I am very grateful and happy that my lifelong dream of seeing Brantwood came true. I do not know when my next opportunity will be to come and sit by the lake and drink tea in the English garden. But there is one thing for sure: I came home from that holiday not the same person as when we had started out. I shall always remember this moment of spiritual awakening and quiet interruption in the time of pandemic.

One evening at the cottage while I was writing my journal, Gordon asked me if I knew this following poem by Wordsworth. I didn't know this poem until he introduced it to me. It gave me a deeper appreciation of all the limpid streams in the Duddon Valley.

 

There is a little unpretending Rill

Of limpid water, humbler far than aught

That ever among Men or Naiads sought

Notice or name!--It quivers down the hill,

Furrowing its shallow way with dubious will;

Yet to my mind this scanty Stream is brought

Oftener than Ganges or the Nile; a thought

Of private recollection sweet and still!

Months perish with their moons; year treads on year!

But, faithful Emma! thou with me canst say

That, while ten thousand pleasures disappear,

And flies their memory fast almost as they;

The immortal Spirit of one happy day

Lingers beside that Rill, in vision clear.

William Wordsworth

This afternoon while I am writing my postcards, I interrupt myself and go to the window at home in Scotland. A series of images chase across my vision, like a beckoning signal, leading me back to a place where I found what is timeless and eternal, and a place where the silent streams are silver and the mountains are gold.