Society of Poets.
§ 2A · Spring and Summer Weekends in the Lake District

The Lyrical Ballads Tour.

Walking with Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Three days in the Lake District, walking where they walked; following the footsteps, and the spirit, of two poets who found everything they needed in this landscape.

Three days, always beginning on a Saturday and ending on the Monday. Small groups, eight to ten people. Four weekends, spread across spring and summer, when the Lakes are at their best.

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Bare feet resting on a wool blanket in long summer grass, the slow pace of a weekend spent walking in the Lake District
Plate I · A slower kind of morning
§ 2A.1 · The Dates

Four weekends, spring through summer. Choose the one that suits you.

£425 per person. Half now, half two weeks before, we'll take care of the reminder.

  1. Saturday 17 to Monday 19 April 2027

    £425 Per person

  2. Saturday 8 to Monday 10 May 2027

    £425 Per person

  3. Saturday 12 to Monday 14 June 2027

    £425 Per person

  4. Saturday 10 to Monday 12 July 2027

    £425 Per person
§ 2A.2 · The Ground We Cover

A weekend spent between fell and water, in the country these two poets called home.

A hand-drawn map of the Lake District. Eight small vermilion pins mark the rough shape of the weekend, joined in order by a dashed line that wanders across the landscape and down into it, without naming its stops.
Where we go, roughly. The rest, in person.
§ 2A.3 · What to Expect

A slower kind of weekend.

There's no itinerary crammed with things to see. Mornings are for walking: long, unhurried, on paths that have been walked for over two centuries. When we're not walking, we're either writing (quiet time with a notebook, letting the day settle) or visiting the places that mattered most to the two poets. There's space for all three, and space between them too.

We keep numbers small on purpose. Eight to ten people means real conversation is possible, with each other, and with the landscape you're standing in.

Bring boots, a rucksack, hiking poles if that's your thing. We'll bring the rest.

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§ 2A.4 · What's Included

Everything is kept simple, and everything is considered.

  1. 01A bespoke pack, put together for you before you arrivePrint, not screen
  2. 02Exclusive, discounted access to some of the area's best places to eatLunches & dinners
  3. 03Fell walking on paths that Wordsworth and Coleridge are known to have walked themselvesTwo long, one short
  4. 04Quiet time set aside for writing, wherever the day takes youWhenever it suits
  5. 05Visits to sites that mattered to both poets. We won't tell you which ones.Half the pleasure is finding out
A quiet Lake District lane between dry stone walls, fells rising beyond, on the walking country that shaped Wordsworth and Coleridge
Plate II · The walking country, in dry stone
§ 2A.5 · The Poets & the Book

The book which revolutionised English literature and sparked the Romantic movement.

In 1798, two young poets published a slim, unassuming volume that is now widely considered the book that started English Romanticism. Lyrical Ballads reshaped the landscape of English poetry: fittingly enough, since this landscape had first shaped them. It argued, in its very grain, that poetry didn't need grand subjects or elevated language. It needed only to look closely at ordinary life, and say what it saw plainly and truly. It began as two friends, walking.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had found each other a few years earlier, and their friendship (restless, argumentative, endlessly walking) was the engine behind it. It found its fullest expression here. Wordsworth made his home at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in 1799; Coleridge followed him north within the year. Together they walked these fells for miles at a time, talking, composing aloud, revising as they went. The expanded edition of Lyrical Ballads (with Wordsworth's now-famous preface, a case for what he called “the real language of men”) took its shape here, among these paths.

This is the ground that made them. We think it's worth walking.

§ 2A.6 · A Few Lines from William and Samuel

Two hundred years on, their words hold up.

Here are a few, from the book that started it all.

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?
William Wordsworth · The Tables Turned · Lyrical Ballads, 1798 ·
With other ministrations thou, O Nature! Healest thy wandering and distempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · The Dungeon · Lyrical Ballads, 1798 ·

Four weekends, spring through summer. Small groups. Time enough to walk the ground that made two poets, not just read about it.

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