Visiting Manchester City, Lake District & Friends, Cumbria, UK.

Inspiration of William Wordsworth & English Industrial Revolution!

Prologue: This chronicle is a continuation to my previous series of Visiting UK that I stopped uploading for quite sometime due to various issues. My journey would continue further after this...

For those soccer fans, Manchester United would be considered as one of the best club teams of the world. For a person with a passion for History, Manchester City meant as one of the most important places of Industrial Revolution in England. Lake District was also home to the famous English poet, William Wordsworth .

One need not wonder from where he got the inspiration to write such famous nature poems if one visits Lake District in Cumbria, UK. My visit to meet Manish and Linthoi who lived in Manchester City began on a train from Coventry. It was a beautiful journey across fantastic English countrysides and I found out that there were two stations. The first one was called Manchester city University and the other being, Manchester City Picadilly, which came later and that’s where I got down. I had a phone and I wasn’t worried because Manish was there to pick me up at the station. On our way to his house, I saw old mills and many warehouses, which reminded that I was truly lucky to be visiting a place of such historical importance. A place I read about once as a History graduate in the European History Class. The station was bigger than most of the others I had been to and it took sometime for both of us to meet finally. He was driving a cute red mini and confessed with an embarrassed sigh that Linthoi had taken the bigger car to London to pick up her parents. We had already discussed that I would not be meeting Linthoi as she would be there to watch one of the Wimbledon matches with her parents whom she had gone to pick up from Heathrow. I was quite amazed that she went driving alone too. It was regrettable but at least, Manish was there to play the host to me fortunately.

Manish and I had plans to visit Lake District and later, I would be traveling alone to Edinburgh, Scotland. Their house was in the suburb and what a house! It was a beautiful typical modern English home in an equally amazing neighbourhood. I could see chapels and rolling green hills from their backyard. The air was a bit chilly but I was really happy that I made it this far. We had the house to ourselves and I cooked a meal, helped by Manish. He took me around for a short drive and I had to take out some cash from the atm with my travel card. We spent the better part of the evening making plans for my journey to Edinburgh, booked my train ticket using Manish’s credit card and I paid him in cash. We had to go to Lake District the next day and the following day, I would be on my way to Edinburgh. I booked my hostel room on the phone at Edinburgh.

Our drive to Lake District in Cumbria was simply a heavenly experience. The homes were curiously built with black slabs of stones and the place was hilly with beautiful lakes and narrow roads. I read somewhere that the best way to tour Lake District was to backpack and walk around. I understood the reason why and regretted that I had only a limited time to achieve that feat. We went boating and then, Manish wanted to take me more into the interior to an isolated lake and on our way, we had lunch at a typical English Inn. I decided to try the roast chicken, beer and Yorkshire pudding. It was tasty and light. I saw beautiful rolling hills of Lake District, and Manish confirmed that due to it close proximity to Scotland, the topography was pretty similar. He showed me a Quarry on top of a rocky hill and the view was breathetaking. I even thought it was quite similar to scenes of Manipur, only cleaner and free of dust! What fascinated me were the long and unending stone walls, crisscrosed on the landscape, which is a universal sight everywhere in England. It was a remnant of the Pre-Industrial Revolution in a phenomenon called “enclosures” when private property began to be enclosed by individual property owners. It was a pre-cursor to Capitalism and Industrial Revolution, which incidentally flourished in Manchester, England during the 18 & 19th Century.

Manish dropped me at the station the following day and I was on my way to Edinburgh to see Scotland. The land of the Braveheart and Highlanders!