Beauty takes its time. In this case, 500 million years. But the result is a landscape of mountains, lakes and tarns that has long since bewitched poets and painters; beguiled walkers, hikers and nature lovers; and inspired the birth of the conservation movement, with the understanding that beautiful landscapes restore the human spirit.
In the 18th century the Lake District was ‘discovered’ by the creative community, particularly the Romantics like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey – collectively known as ‘the Lake Poets’ – who treated the landscape as a source of sublime inspiration and copper-fastened their conviction that communion with nature could solve all human problems.