Steve's Nature

Today, I'm going to take you to the little hamlet of Town End, a grandiose name, for the town in question is the village of Grasmere in the heart of The Lake District. We're going to visit an early 18th century alehouse, which was converted into a cottage later in that century. In 1799, a brother and sister from Cockermouth moved into the renamed Dove Cottage. They were both amateur naturalists, although better known as a poet and diarist respectively. Their names were William and Dorothy Wordsworth. An extract from one of Dorothy's diaries, and one of William's poems, will give a flavour of their life there as the 19th century was ushered in: " William had slept badly – he got up at 9 o clock, but before he rose he had finished with the Beggar Boys – & while we were at Breakfast that is (for I had Breakfasted) he, with his Basin of Broth before him untouched & a little plate of Bread and butter he wrote the Poem to a Butterfly! – He ate not a morsel, nor p...

  I thought I'd take you over to the east coast this week, to the delightful little seaside town of Seaham in County Durham. Lord Byron lived, and was married here in the 19th century, and his daughter, the mathematician Ada Lovelace, was born here. Seaham was a less attractive place in those days, as Byron wrote in a letter to a friend: " Upon this dreary coast we have nothing but county meetings and shipwrecks; and I have this day dined upon fish, which probably dined upon the crews of several colliers lost in the late gales. But I saw the sea once more in all the glories of surf and foam." Let's head down to the beach. I'm looking for these things, called variously; hag stones, worm stones, or holey stones. The holes are made by marine organisms and they make ideal, natural fishing weights. The beach is also famous for sea glass. There was a large bottleworks in the town at the end of the 19th century and waste glass was dumped into the sea. Over the years, the...