Literature while you wait !

Travelling through Keswick we pass a bus shelter which has this wonderful mural painted on it. Of course it isn't capturing a moment in the traditional children's story about a young girl coming across a house belonging to Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Little Bear who have gone out while they wait for their porridge to cool down, but it is, nonetheless, about Three Bears.

Robert Southey was one of the English Lakes Poets, a friend of William Wordsworth. Southey and his wife had moved to Keswick in 1803 and lived in nearby Greta Hall. He loved to write poems and stories for his young children to enjoy. His story did not include Goldilocks - she is a modern invention - his story, published in 1837 was his version of a classic fairy tale about an old woman and three bears. Before he wrote the story down, it would have been passed down orally through generations

As we travel through Keswick going alongside Derwentwater - the lake that sits close to Keswick - and into the Borrowdale valley we pass the Lodore Falls. Both a waterfall and now the name of a neighbouring spa hotel .

The connection with Robert Southey is that in 1820 he wrote the Cataract of Lodore for his son. It goes like this, the first and the last verse:

"How does the Water,
Come down at Lodore?"
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme."

...

Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending,
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar,
And this way the Water comes down at Lodore.