William Wordsworth was born 250 years ago, on April 7, 1770. To mark the anniversary, I decided to get in early, and walk around Grasmere with the poet’s own guidebook to the Lake District. I went in October, as he recommended, and filed a piece to Telegraph Travel in February for publication in April. Thanks to Covid-19 and lockdown, publication was postponed, but the piece finally appeared in print at the weekend, when Dove Cottage, one of the poet’s former homes, reopened. You can now read it online.

  The picture is of the view from the summit of Loughrigg Fell, from where Wordsworth probably had his earliest glimpse of what would become his first real “abiding place”: Grasmere.