I needed to get away this Christmas. Too many unpleasant things pressing in on me all at the same time. The poet William Wordsworth dealt with it by drawing on the solace of the natural world. I needed his thoughts and decided that this Christmas would be a time for the Lake Poets.

Armed with a copy of the Prelude and a thin volume of Shelley and not much else, I bundled Sally the Psycho Dog into my newly acquired VW Campervan, bought in defiance of all logic of how I should be spending my time, and headed North.