Potter Mania

I'm going for the total immersion Potter treatment today. Rabbits, ducks and hedgehogs all the way.

We grown-ups head for Hill Top, the part-time home of Beatrix Potter whenever she could escape the society of her clingy mother in London.

Folks with small children head to the kid oriented 'World of Beatrix Potter', where the larger than life size characters are set in their own little scenes from the books. I may have to borrow a small child to get in without looking like a sad old lady playing with her dolls.

There's an uneasy truce between me and the lady in the Sat Nav today, but just to show me who's boss she takes me through the dreaded Kirkstone Pass (I'm assuming it's dreaded, if it isn't it should be), before delivering me to my destination at Near Sawrey, close to Windermere. I quietly hatch a plan to get home by a different route. Not that I'm becoming paranoid or anything, you understand.

The National Trust web site advises visitors to Hill Top to be early to 'avoid disappointment'. I arrive just after nine o'clock for a ten o'clock opening, as there's no way I plan to be disappointed. Three cars are here already, and by 9.20 quite a queue is forming at the ticket office. One lady has stayed in the village over-night as she was one of yesterday's disappointed persons. They open up at about 9.50 and we either pay up or, like me, show our Nat Trust membership card (love that card).

We all troop down the road to Hill Top after collecting our tickets, and linger in the charming garden until our ticket time is called. I'm a 10.05 so I have time for a few photos if only these people would get out of the way.

Inside, the house is just as it was when Beatrix lived here. She kept it as her studio after she married and moved to Castle Cottage. It's a cut above Wordsworth's Dove Cottage but still oozing rustic charm. Every room has a reminder of one or other of her books. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers is easily recognised as set in the kitchen and on the stairs. In The Tailor of Gloucester we see the dresser and grandfather clock, and the 1902 coronation teapot appears in The Tale of the Pie and The Patty-Pan.

After her marriage to solicitor, William Hellis, she bought farming land in the Lake District and became a much respected breeder of Herdwick sheep and a dedicated conservationist. On her death she left 14 farms and 4000 acres of land to the National Trust.

In nearby Hawkshead, the former office of William Hellis, also left to the Trust, is now the 'Beatrix Potter Gallery' where one can view the original sketches and paintings that illustrated her books, along with photographs and information about her life achievements.

It seems I still haven't had enough of the Potter Experience yet so I set of for Bowness-on-Windermere to find 'The World of Beatrix Potter'. Like most things in this country, it's well hidden and poorly signed. I raise this issue with the young man at the town Information Centre where I purchase my ticket, and he tells me it all has to do with the fact that the great British public love to complain and, of course, need something to complain about!

When I arrive I look around and find there are other mature persons sneaking into this kiddies paradise so I toss my head and stride boldly through the door and into a Potteresque fairyland, with each display recreating one scene or another from all your favourite Potter books. Peter is there as the star of the show along with Jemima, Squirrel Nutkin and friends, Mrs Tiggy-winkle in her kitchen, Jeremy Fisher in his pond. It would have been a shame to miss this.

My Potter day ends with a cup of tea from the Thermos, sitting on a rock by the lake finalising my plans for returning home NOT via Kirkstone Pass.