The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or fells), but also for its associations with the early nineteenth century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth and the other Lake Poets.
The Lakes were designated a National Park on 9 May 1951, becoming the second National Park in the United Kingdom after the Peak District. It is the most visited national park in the United Kingdom with 15.8 million annual visitors and more than 23 million annual day visits. It is the largest of the thirteen National Parks in England and Wales, and the second largest in the UK after the Cairngorms.
Historically shared by the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, the Lake District now lies entirely within the modern county of Cumbria. All the land in England higher than three thousand feet above sea level lies within the National Park, including Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. It also contains the deepest and longest lakes in England, Wastwater and Windermere, respectively.
Read more about Lake District: Physical Geography, Geology, Climate, Wildlife, Literature and Art, Nomenclature
Famous quotes containing the words lake and/or district:
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)