Next morning it was on with the literary tour ... to Beatrix Potter's Hill Top, with apples growing around the door, a fire crackling in the grate, and dressers full of teapots and Delft that you can see in her books. It is a house for a single lady and I hadn't realised that she didn't live here after her marriage, but used it as a studio/bolthole, installing her husband in a bigger house she owned just over the road. (This sounds a perfect marital arrangement to me.)

You shuffle through Hill Top with Potter fans from all over the world - well, mostly Japan. But when we arrived at Bank Ground Farm - immortalised as Holly Howe in Swallows and Amazons - we were the only ones there. Of course, you can't resist tacking down the steep field to the lake, just like Ship's Boy's Roger ...
Although, if you're a stickler for accuracy, Roger tacked up the field to where Mother was waiting with the duffers don't drown telegram. Roger was seven. My knees don't do up-hill.

This year's sloe gin will be Swal-loes Gin, although I picked barely enough for one bottle as the hedges were almost picked bare. Still, beats buying them on ebay like last time.

We sat and watched the steam yacht chugging across the lake. And instead of pemmican and lashing of ginger beer, we had the best tea and cake of the entire trip. (Lime and coconut sponge. On a 'help yourself' honesty system - are they mad, trusting ladies with cake - that put us on our honour as landlubbers to cut it generously but fairly.)

Ruskin isn't fashionable these days but it was only down the road to his house, so might as well ...

And look what we found. I'm still tossing up where I'd most like to live.

It wasn't planned as a literary tour of the Lake District, but one thing led to another. Saturday was Wordsworth day as we started out at Dove Cottage, marvelling at the thought of Wordsworth, his wife, several children, sister Dorothy, not to mention all their literary visitors, crammed into those dark, tiny rooms, still smoke-scented from coal fires. Who wouldn't feel a thrill seeing the couch where he lay in vacant or in pensive mood thinking of daffodils? Although it was Dorothy who noted them first: 
I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.















Now I need to read Dorothy's Grasmere Journal and de Quincey's kiss and tell Recollections. (Today they keep a vase of dried poppy heads under his portrait.)

If you follow the scent of freshly-baked gingerbread from the old village school in Grasmere that has been Sarah Nelson's gingerbread shop since 1854, you'll come to Wordsworth's grave in St Oswald's churchyard ... he died in 1850, before the shop, but Dorothy mentions buying gingerbread in her journal.

Then we drove on to Rydal Mount, the family home from 1813 - and another couch where presumably he also laid in pensive mood. The house was bought in derelict state by a great-great-great grand-daughter in 1969 and Wordsworth descendants still use it as a family holiday home today. An Indian lady looked completely overwhelmed to be there, fulfilling a lifelong dream ... which made me feel ashamed that I only know snippets of Wordsworth by heart ...  daffodils and quiet as a nun and still glides the stream. Now I need to read The Prelude.

Reports of traumatised seagulls over Morecambe Bay have been exaggerated, the RSPB said in a statement today. However, counselling is being provided for birds who glimpsed a well-fed middle-aged lady emerging from the hot-tub on her roof terrace. The Eric Gill seahorses politely averted their eyes.

The cupboard at home is bare.

Over the past few days, I have stuffed myself on Bara brith - Chorley cake - Morecambe rock - Grasmere gingerbread - Kendal mint cake - smoked boar chop - smoked damson sauce - thunder and lightning ice cream - scones and jam - black pudding - parched peas - did I mention baked Alaska and steak and chips ...

I think I can fairly say that I did my bit to support regional cooking in the north-west.

So what's for dinner shouldn't be the pressing problem of this afternoon.

Except a girl's got to eat!

Pauline in the Yellow Dress, Herbert James Gunn, 1944

I see this painting on my desktop every day ... I can't remember why I dragged it there but it has become my gateway to BBC's Your Paintings, my favourite website, where I drop in constantly for work and for pleasure.

So when I realised I'd be passing through Preston on my way to the Lakes, I thought I'd break the journey to visit Pauline at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery.

Isn't she a glamour puss, with her 'shampoo and set' hairdo, her red lips and painted toenails peeping out from her shoe? (The Daily Mail called her 'the Mona Lisa of 1944.'

Dorette, Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, 1933

Then I came across Dorette ... don't you think she could be a Daphne du Maurier heroine?

In the Golden Olden Time, John Atkinson Grimshaw, c 1870

One of the best things about visiting provincial museums is running into old friends - like this Atkinson Grimshaw - and thinking, 'Well, fancy that, I never realised you lived here!' Is this a Wilkie Collins' heroine on her way to confront the brute who seduced her and got her with child ....
Or is she just an ordinary woman walking briskly home to a welcoming fireplace? (No prizes for guessing that I prefer the Victorian melodrama option.)

Girl Reading, Harold Knight, 1932

 I was sorry that this old favourite didn't appear to be on display. (Back in 12 months, apparently.)

Preston Corporation Chrysanthemum House, Albert Woods, 1921

And I would have loved to have seen these splendid chrysanths.

The Harris Museum is one of those wonderful examples of Victorian civic pride and there are some magnificent buildings in the city centre. I strolled for an hour - it's easy to wander out of Victorian splendour and into present day poverty/drugs - but I also discovered this beautiful Georgian square and a café that was like stepping back to the 1930s.

And then ... I jumped back on the train and headed for Art Deco Morecambe.

Back home with a cup of tea and a piece of Grasmere gingerbread ...

And it's hard to imagine that only this lunchtime I was admiring the stunning view over Lake Windermere from the terrace of Blackwell, this lovely Arts and Crafts house. Currently number 1 on my list of houses I wish I owned.

Bring Me Sunshine ... at least I hope so, because I've spent the afternoon planning a little jaunt, starting with a night of Art Deco glamour at the Midland Hotel, now restored to its Streamline Moderne glory. Will I meet Poirot shuffling down the corridor with his spongebag?

I've been wanting to visit, if only for tea, ever since the hotel reopened a few years ago. (You can read more about it here and here.)

I think I last visited Morecambe c1975 and even then people were cracking jokes about watching the traffic lights change.

This afternoon I discovered this old Alan Bennett play. If you go to 47.34 you'll see his elderly couple, newly retired to Morecambe - surely based on his Mam and Dad - having tea at the old shabby genteel Midland. Look out for the Eric Gill mural. Then they're off for a run up to Windermere, which is where I'm heading next.

By 'eck ... it made me feel ancient.

Now can anyone recommend somewhere for a nice cup of tea and a nice clean loo?