There was a point in my recent past when I was considering two widely diverse objects at the same time - William Wordsworth and Mr Jennings. I was staring at the poet's birthplace in Cockermouth - a very large and impressive building with 17 windows and a door showing to the front, and wondering why, with that background, he did not do better in life. Whereas Mr Jennings, of much the same era, hoisted himself out of a small place named Lorton, moved himself to Cockermouth, and, with the aid of a good well, and good water, created beer to be reckoned with.

The thing you need to sustain you in the prime of life is a sound body, a good head, and a pleasant disposition. You have to seek it. It does not come by accident. I speak, of course, not of poetry, but of this brew of Mr Jennings.

His bitter saved me from melancholy in the Lake District this last week. I was familiar with Jennings at a distance, but I had never before had it in its own kitchen. It feels cosier closer to home. It looks at you from the corners of its eyes and dances at your approval. Further afield it just tends to look competent.

I fancy the bitter at 3.5 per cent alcohol, but the best-seller is Cumberland Ale, at 4 per cent and I have never even tried Sneck Lifter at 5.1 per cent - partly because I am afraid of the strength; partly because it sounds rude. Actually, it is not. Rude, that is. A sneck-lifter was a man down to his last sixpence lifting the sneck, or latch, of the pub to spend it in the hope that someone would buy him a pint or two to follow.

I was around Keswick to be precise. I am an inveterate Lakes visitor. All I ask is comfortable quarters, plenty of shops, lots of drink, large windows and an observant eye. You can keep all those towering peaks and cascading waters - that is, literally, for the birds. I just love to watch hikers from the confines of a good coffee shop - stumbling along in their big boots, thinking that this is the life, and drenched to their sub-prime mortgages. Oh Lord! how serious they are encased in their lurid plastics.

I saw one fellow who had stepped outside his property in black plastic, an umbrella over his head, and he just let rain pour and pour around him. He must have loved it. One step and he would have been inside shelter again with his beloved.

I had booked the cottage, and very pleasant, too, within yards of a broad river called Greta, the only Greta I had known since Garbo. Greta went inkle-tinkle, all night long, so I kept the bedroom window slightly ajar to hear the only genuine rock music, pure as nature intended. There were kingfishers, so they say, around the swift-flowing parts, dippers in the more tranquil areas, bobbing up and down on their metatarsals as if anxious to get the best of everything before something else took it. A bit like bankers, come to think of it.

An engineer long ago built a railway in the area and he had to compete with the River Greta. Greta, being a bit of a doxy, ambled about flirtatiously here and there, changing course, so our poor engineer had to keep building bridges to take account of it. Very nice bridges. Alas, his railway disappeared and the track area became a cyclists' and walkers' paradise - flat, surrounded by the best of nature, and with Jennings at regular intervals en route.

On the second day, i did something I had not done since winning the second world war: I decided to walk this redundant railway track between Keswick and Threlkeld. They said it was about three miles. It was, of course, 30 or so. Perhaps more. Possibly 60. My feet deny what the map declares. Distance did not daunt me. I plodded on without regard for personal safety with cyclists and old people whizzing by on my circumference.

The common factor is that they all said hello. They smiled. They were happy. They were people not hating people. Can you reasonably ask for more when you look at Burma and Lebanon and Israel and the Gaza strip, the City and the House of Commons?

To return to more urgent matters, I had previously discovered Jennings on a shorter walk to the outskirts of Keswick where there is a pub called Twa Dogs. It was Thra Dogs by the time I had finished with it, because my dog took up residence with the water bowl for company. Good and fresh with a sturdy froth - and that only the barman.

At the Threlkeld pub I gave my wife an interesting talk on the infantry who walked from Catterick to Blackpool in wartime training with full kit. "They marched a mile every 12 minutes," I said before her eyes glazed over and she began to talk to a couple who had what looked like a large rug with eyes beneath their table.

This is a Total Dog area. Dogs are welcome in pubs. They parade the pavements like models. They are followed by compliant humans carrying plastic bags. They are supreme. I was waiting outside a large and poshish garden centre with my dog when an old woman said, "I wish he was mine." A girl from the cash desk came out and said, "He is welcome inside." Most people stopped to ask what kind he is (a cross between a poodle and a schitzu). Some asked his name. I was just the interpreter.

The weather had obviously lost its way and arrived at Keswick dazed. it was hot, with benign evenings more readily found in Spain or Italy. I drove to Ambleside and there were a couple of signs by the roadside announcing FLOOD. Of course there was no flood, nor hint of one: it was pure nostalgia. Some poor soul, resident in these parts, now driven mad by warmth and sun no doubt put them there to calm his wife and family.

I had expected instant internet contact once I arrived but there was none: My laptop with its dongle was in a black hole. I would like to have written about how the National Trust had so nicely arranged hills around Keswick - a credit to them: it must have involved hundreds of JCBs - but it was these very monsters together with great marching trees that were stubbing out my feeble signals.

My mobile and navigational equipment were similarly afflicted. I was a nonentity in nowhere, voiceless. At one point, in Ambleside, I did reach a friend by phone and he said I had been asked about. By whom, I wondered? Someone asking my breed? Comforting news, nonetheless. A man who is not asked about has ceased to exist.

Well, here I am and there are all these words to prove it. Like Greta, I will just amble on.

Geoffrey Mather © 2008

May 13, 2008