It was in this little cottage, at times ‘crammed edge full’ with people, in the heart of the remote Lake District, that William Wordsworth wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language and Dorothy kept her famous ‘Grasmere Journal’, now on display in the adjoining Museum. William came across his first Grasmere home by chance as he and his brother John walked along this lane with his fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in late 1799. He and his sister Dorothy moved in just a few weeks later.The cottage had once been an inn, the ‘Dove and Olive Bough’. It was now to be the Wordsworths’ home for the next eight years. In 1802 William married Mary Hutchinson & three of their five children were born here. Step into Dove Cottage to get a sense of that time: stone floors, dark paneled rooms, glowing coal fires and the family’s own belongings. Little has changed in the house since the Wordsworths lived here. Stroll in the Dove Cottage garden, a place of refuge, meditation & inspiration. It was, wrote Wordsworth, ‘the work of our own hands’. Here they planted flowers & vegetables, watched birds & butterflies and, most importantly, read, talked and wrote poetry. Next door to Dove Cottage is the wonderful Wordsworth museum which is full of his handwritten manuscripts & lots of personal mementos of the great writer, a must-see for all fans.