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Trips

English Trip

English Trip to the Lake District

the moments in Dove Cottage feasting on Wordsworth’s striding verse, it will be the Saturday that I will always remember. Rowing out to St Herbert’s Island, tracing the footsteps of the great Christian Saints of the North, then reaching back still further to stand at the centre of Castlerigg Stone Circle, reliving, in situ, a precious moment of a book I read long ago as a child while the fells revolved around us, it was here that I remembered. Once again, with this Brotherhood of the Fells, I was a child again. I was living the literature through their eyes – the eyes of ‘youthful poets, who among these Hills’ were channelling the same feelings of sublimity felt by tribesman, Roman, knight and poet. That fellowship, as much as the lakes, fells and fields, has rejuvenated my own writing and reinvigorated my reading. I thank them all whole-heartedly for this gift of a trip. Mr J. D. Manley

happy in each other’s company. A very special thank you to the boys – Harry, Archie, Matthew, Chris and Dominic – for choosing to come on the first trip of its kind, and to Mr Manley who led the fellowship from the beginning. Mr M. G. Hilton-Dennis When we devised this trip – a response to lockdown, plugging a missing gap in the canon for these aspiring English scholars – it was with reason. When we found ourselves with the birds and the clouds high atop Helvellyn, logic had been left at the mountain’s foothills. We were dreaming now as equals. It was one of those rare and precious moments of absorption. These boys had teased me throughout their GCSE years whenever I mentioned the sublime. ‘Yeah, but what actually is it, Sir?’, to which I responded, ‘I can’t tell you; you have to see it for yourselves!’ As we scrambled up Swirral’s Edge one of them turned to me with a look half of awe, half of fear. ‘Sir, I think this is it!’ For all the ascents,

With the summer holiday still in its infancy, a group of Lower Sixth Formers led by two die-hard Romantics, Mr Manley and Mr Hilton-Dennis, ventured forth into the Lake District. Following in the footsteps of Wordsworth, their search for the sublime took them over the top of Helvellyn, across Derwent Water, up Catbells, to the edge of Rydal Water and into the quietly beating heart of Dove Cottage in Grasmere, happy home to William and beloved sister Dorothy. Here we were presented with a first edition of the 1798 Lyrical Ballads that probably belonged to William’s daughter. As Archie Stewart read an extract from the poem ‘Tintern Abbey’, his hands trembling to be holding a volume of poetry so precious, I was reminded of Wordsworth’s famous description of poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility.’ So it was with us on a trip that glimpsed the transcendent, and each day of which ended with us gathered around the dining room table in Kendal, ‘absolutely shattered’ as Harry would say, but entirely

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Taylorian 2023