But at the next, when she looks down, she realises that though the summit seemed lifeless at first glance, beauty could be found clinging to the rocks: In one moment she describes a landscape that stretches out for miles from the summit on which she stands. Scafell, Looking North, oil painting by Delmar Banner, 1945. She saw that examining the details of a mountainside could be just as rewarding as the view from the summit. Reading the letter in which she describes this feat suggests her way of understanding the mountains went well beyond tales of sporting prowess. The climbĬlimbing up Scafell Pike with Barker was perhaps Wordsworth’s most significant walking achievement. That’s an impressive pace of a little under four miles an hour around the Lake District hills. In 1818, when she was 46, she boasted to the writer Sara Coleridge that she could “walk 16 miles in four hours and three quarters, with short rests between, on a blustering cold day, without having felt any fatigue”. In her letters, Dorothy repeatedly bragged about the speed with which she could walk – and how little fatigued she was afterwards – until her mid-50s. The Wordsworth siblings walked together most days for the best part of four decades – Thomas De Quincey estimated that William walked 175,000 miles over his lifetime, and Dorothy can’t have fallen far short of this figure. Walking was an important part of the Wordsworths’ daily routine, but they were well aware and proud of the fact that their commitment to almost daily extensive walks was unusual. Natural strength Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Barker’s route when they walked up Scafell Pike.

But she was also an important figure in her own right, and her account of climbing Scafell Pike is among the first written records of a recreational ascent of the mountain – and it’s the earliest such account to be written by a woman.Īs a new exhibition reveals, Wordsworth and Barker’s climb of Scafell Pike was not simply a mountain climb, but a rebellious act that opened up mountains – and mountaineering – for successive generations of women. The siblings lived together for most of their lives, and Dorothy was an important influence over William’s verse. Wordsworth is best known as the poet William Wordsworth’s sister. Great Gable mountain and Scafell Pike on the right side. In an age when women walking by themselves – let alone in the remote uplands – was frowned upon, this was a daring feat. But that didn’t stop Dorothy Wordsworth and her friend Mary Barker ascending the mountain in October 1818. In the early 19th century – when mountaineering at all was still an unusual activity – Scafell Pike was rarely climbed. Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain is a popular place to climb, both as part of the Three Peaks Challenge and for walkers in search of the sublime Lake District scenery.

Dorothy wordsworth