“Lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake/ And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat/ Went heaving through the water like a swan,” remembered William Wordsworth in The Prelude, his epic autobiographical masterpiece. The romantic poet was describing his spiritual awakening as a young man in a stolen rowing boat.
When I dipped my oars into the same body of water in the Lake District last summer, I was in a craft hired from Windermere Lake Cruises, surrounded by small electric motorboats and steamers full of waving holidaymakers, and went heaving through the water like a bewildered walrus.
