Location: Cumbria, North West England Date completed: During ordovicion period, c. 458 million years ago Designers/builders: Natural feature Function: Tourist centre, farming, forestry and industry

Surely nowhere has had such persuasive and poetic advocates as the Lake District. William Wordsworth and his companions, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, were collectively known as the "lake poets", because of their love of the area and the poetry that it inspired within them.  Wordsworth in particular was born in the area - at Cockermouth - and lived for sixty of his 80 years there. Perhaps his most famous work, "I Wandered lonely as a cloud", was inspired by the sight of "… a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils, Beside the lake…" on the shores of Ullswater. In 1810 Wordsworth published the "Guide to the Lakes", which was influential in popularising the Lake District as a destination for tourists, particularly after the railways made access easier for more people. Others before Wordsworth had visited and written of the Lake District, not always in glowing terms. In 1724 Daniel Defoe in "A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain", said that Westmorland was, "… the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I passed over in England…". Indeed for many, wild, untamed landscape was dangerous and threatening, an impression that was to change through the efforts of the Romantic poets and increased tourism. Many other poets, authors and artists were drawn to the Lakes, either as residents or visitors, including Thomas de Quincy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, Thomas Carlyle and Lord Tennyson. In the 20th century, Beatrix Potter, the children's author, lived and farmed at Hill Top Farm, in Near Sawrey. She wrote many of her books there, including "The tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck".

The Lake District is located in the North West of England, previously divided among the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire, but today wholly within the new country of Cumbria. It includes Scafell Pike, at 3,209 ft (978 m) the highest mountain in England, as well as all the land in England higher than 3,000 ft (914 m). As the name suggests, it is also an area of spectacular and beautiful lakes, including Wastwater, the deepest lake in England, and Windermere, the longest.