My Favourite Place: The Lake District
The Lake District is really in my soul. It gripped me with its lakes and vast landscapes. It makes me feel so small, but, at the same time, invincible and free. Whatever weighs me down, the problems of life and the daily grind, as soon as I step out onto the fells my head is clear and I feel enthused once again.
I first went 16 years ago and I thought ‘wow!’ And I’ve returned every year since. It feels like home. It’s wonderful the way it strips everything back to just what’s important. The three of us, my husband and son and I, go out and it’s a precious adventure that we can all take part in.
There are lots of great gardens in Cumbria. Holehird Gardens overlooks Windermere and has a fantastic collection of alpines, while fascinating Brantwood on Coniston Water was the Victorian home of plant scientist and artist John Ruskin; this hub of botany and geology is now a museum.
I am obsessed with plant hunting and seeing plants in their natural environment. We do a lot of walking and I look out for plants wherever we go. I’m the plant equivalent of a birdwatcher or twitcher. I’m always stopping to look and take a photograph, then I spend the rest of my time trying to catch up. I always have my nose in the dirt somehow!
In conjunction with the John Muir Trust, volunteers are researching arctic alpines in the Lake District, so I always look out for plants such as alpine mouse ear, alpine cinquefoil, purple saxifrage and mountain lady’s mantle, Alchemilla alpina. It's such a buzz to find them. My absolute highlight last year was finding carnivorous sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, along a boggy stream below the Old Man of Coniston.
All you need is some food, water and some walking boots and its out into the elements with a map and compass. I love the diversity of landscape, the mountains, the woods and the lakes; the way it encompasses art and writing. Walking the fells in the footsteps of Wainwright. It's these simple pleasures that make me so very happy.
■ www.lakedistrict.gov.uk; www.brantwood.org.uk; www.holehirdgardens.org.uk.