A Ridge too far

What do I know about Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

Well, not a lot really beyond having to learn his poems for school exams all of those years ago and his association with Wordsworth as part of the Romantic Movement of English poets.

I have seen a portrait of the man and yes, he has the pallid skin, long hair and demeanour of that particular gang of intellectuals, philosophers and hangers on that typified the literary years of the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries.

Image from the New York Public Library

Of course he had ill health but that sickly metabolism will have given plenty of time in confinement in which to muse and put pen to paper.

Then there was the addiction to opium although it is said that this grew from a lifetime of medical use rather than intentional self destruction.

What I didn't know until recently was the love that Coleridge had for all things mountains.

It stemmed from his frequent visits to the English Lake District and across Europe and it is thought that he was the originator of the term "mountaineering" as in the ascending of mountains for pleasure rather than, up to that time in military or economic conquest, although that may just be speculation, in itself a bit of romanticism.

One such exploit was Coleridge's nine day tour, thought to have been continuous, of the high peaks of the Lake District including what was described for that time, around 1802 as a pioneering ascent of Scafell Pike, the highest in England at 978 metres although only the thirteenth highest when taking into account all of the British Isles.

Given his ill health and in that era little more than tweeds and stout shoes as suitable attire it is remarkable that Coleridge even attempted the feat.

There was some talk that he had actually got lost which could explain the sheer endurance of nine days and also his arrival back to his Keswick home in ribbon tattered trousers and badly disintegrated footwear.

In a series of letters he later admitted to having been a bit reckless out on the wild fells but at the same time elated, giddy and irrationally calm.

Those in the modern era who have tried to track his footsteps claim that he had in fact chosen the wrong route off Scafell Pike and had risked injury or worse in the rocky formation known as Broad Stand.

Coleridge documented his mountain experiences in series of notebooks and those studying them in later generations regard them as containing some of the best examples of travel writing in existence.

Now, looking back myself I am sure that I would have had a completely different attitude to my enforced study of Coleridge's poetry had I known about his daft mountain exploits that made him somehow more approachable and understandable.