Tourism chiefs in the Lake District are so concered about a shortage of daffodils that they are asking visitors report any sightings on Twitter.

The area’s flowers, celebrated by William Wordsworth, are normally blooming by late February.

But after the coldest winter in 31 years, there is no sign in the vales and hills of Wordsworth’s famous “host of golden daffodils”.

The thousands of visitors who some in search of the flowers every year, have been asked to inform the authorities in a project known as “Daff Watch”.

Julia Darroch of Cumbria Tourism said only a few buds have come up by Ullswater where Wordsworth was inspired to write his famous poem.

And in Dora’s Field in Rydal near Ambleside where the poet lived for 37 years there is not one flower.

Miss Darroch insisted Wordsworth would have approved of “tweeting” about daffodils rather than writing poetry.

“He was quite a rebel in his time and quite outspoken so I think he would be tweeting with the rest of us,”she said.

People who have booked hotels in the Lake District over the weekend of March 20th and 21st are in luck because the National Trust has announced that it will not charge entry to any of its sites over the weekend.

Speaking ahead of the British Tourism Week, co-chair of the project Bernard Donoghue highlighted the offer, which coincides with the event.

“Regardless to whether you are a member or not, just go along to your local National Trust property and it’s free of charge,” he noted.

Anyone visiting the Lake District that weekend could find that a trip around some of the sights associated with Beatrix Potter is the best way to take advantage of the offer.

The National Trust owns Hill Top, the children’s author’s house, which still holds all her belongings exactly as she left them.

A gallery and museum about her life is located in the nearby village of Hawkshead, where fans of Beatrix Potter’s characters can see some of the original illustrations from her books

Tickets are on sale for this year’s Kendal Calling festival at £85 for the weekend.

Tickets sold out last year which this year has also introduced a deposit scheme which enables ticket buyers to pay £30 now to secure a ticket and pay the rest later at no extra cost.

500 early bird discount adult tickets including 3 days and nights camping is priced at £65 (normal price £85), a child (11-14 years) weekend ticket is priced at £45, and children under 11 can attend for free, but need a ticket. A campervan ticket is priced at £40.

Kendal Calling is held in the Lake District, over the weekend of Friday 30th July to Sunday 1st August and is a wholly independent festival returning for its fifth year and returning to the Lowther Estate, Kendal, in East Cumbria.

Festival goers can expect a circus big-top main stage, dance tent, Kaylied ‘folk’ tent, Croissant Neuf tent, a new music ‘Calling Out’ Stage, chillout area, and camping is available.

2010 sees the festival grow to 8,000 capacity so expect all the regular favourites (entertainers, beer tent, big top marquees, comedians, cabaret) plus many more new and innovative extras, whilst keeping the intimate vibe and friendly atmosphere.

You can buy tickets here

A NEW guide book packed with information on what’s going on in Cumbria this year has been launched.

The free, 70-page Events 2010 Guide lists nearly 600 activities between February and Boxing Day.

The guide, produced by the Lake District National Park Authority and Cumbria Tourism, was launched this week when 250,000 copies were distributed in the region.

It covers activities such as festivals and cultural events and also includes information about more than 300 guided walks across the Lake District.

Andrea Runkee, of Cumbria Tourism, said: “The message is simple: If you intend spending any time in the Lakes this year, this is the must-have guide.”

The guide is available from tourist information centres, libraries, hotels and guest houses, visitor attractions, motorway service stations, airports and train stations.

Anyone visiting hotels in the Lake District next month may want to know what entertainment is on offer in the evenings.

A must-see event for any literary fans is one featuring the works of Anthony Trollope, one of the region’s best known authors.

In an engaging show, actor Edward Fox, also from the Lake District, will take to the stage at the Theatre by the Lake to perform the one-man show about Trollope’s life and works.

The audience will be guided through his life and meet some of his most famous creations along the way.

Characters that will make an appearance include the warden Septimus Harding, Mrs Proudie and Mr Obadiah Slope.

Fox will use extracts from Trollope’s novels to portray the author, as well as providing excerpts from his autobiography.

Tickets for the show cost £15, with only one performance scheduled for February 7th.

Located at Lakeside in Keswick, the theatre itself offers spectacular views across Derwentwater, Borrowdale and the Western Fells.

Entries are open for this year’s Great North Swim – and hundreds of amateur swimmers from across the region have already signed up to take part.

The event, run by the North-East sports firm behind the Great North Run, is held in the Lake District every year.

More than 6,000 people took part in the open water challenge last year, following the inaugural race in 2008.

The event features Olympic champions, club swimmers, and charity fundraisers, who line up together on the banks of Lake Windermere, England’s largest lake.

Only 1,000 places are left for this year’s event.

Colin Hill, project manager for organiser Nova International, described the race, sponsored by British Gas, as an “iconic swim in the sporting calendar”.

The event takes place over the weekend of September 4 and 5, with entries already full for Saturday, and organisers have warned that places could even run out before the New Year.

Mr Hill said he hoped the success of the event would give Cumbria a boost following the recent floods.

Colin Hill, project manager for Great Swim, said: “The British Gas Great North Swim has attracted swimmers from all around the country and is a big positive for Cumbria in the wake of the recent floods.”

Last year’s event featured some of the world’s top swimmers, including North-East Olympian Jo Jackson, from Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Great Swim is open to swimmers of all abilities aged 16 years and over. Entry is £35, including entry fee, an event pack containing Great Swim swim hat and timing chip), souvenir medal and T-shirt.

Entries can be made online at greatswim.org

A series of spectacular outdoor arts events will take place across the Lake District and other parts of Cumbria in the spring and summer of 2010.

Lakes Alive will run from 29 April to 5 September and feature performances by leading international acts set against Cumbria’s beautiful and varied landscape and heritage.

These mainly free shows will include modern circus, dramatic outdoor theatre, contemporary dance and exciting, fiery processions.

Highlights include:

The events start on 29 April to 2 May, with evening performances of a new show created for Lakes Alive by the critically-acclaimed Akademi, a South Asian Dance Company, in the atmospheric ruins of Furness Abbey.

A series of events across the May half term holidays will start with a thrilling outdoor animation festival in Whitehaven showcasing the town’s historic harbour on 29 and 30 May, including a dramatic procession with fire, light and giant illuminated fish by Spanish artists Sarruga.

Zircus Plus a unique International Circus Festival, will put on an amazing show in Barrow from 4 to 6 June, with some of the best and most exciting modern circus acts from Britain and overseas.

On 23 and 24 July German group Theater Titanick, one of Europe’s leading outdoor performance companies, will stage a stunning, large-scale show involving illusion, fire, water, music and dance at Carlisle Castle.

Leading French artists Commandos Percu will stage a dazzling extravaganza of sound, fire, light and colour at Maryport on 30 August.

The season of events will culminate in Mintfest, one of the country’s largest street arts festivals, which takes place in the market town of Kendal at the gateway to the Lakes. Running from 2 to 5 September the festival will include a host of the very best street artists from across the world.

The Lakes Alive programme will also include a series of other performances in Lakeland forests and towns across the county.

Further details about all the shows will be available at lakesalive.org in the New Year.

With a population of 28,000, the Lake District market town of Kendal was once a manufacturing hub of the north, nicknamed the “Auld Grey Town”. More recently, it has been known for the eponymous mint cake, which powered Sir Edmund Hillary up Everest.

But the town is celebrated for another reason – its mountain film festival. Among mountaineers and adventurers, it’s as important a date on the calendar as Cannes or Sundance is to a movie critic.

Next week (November 19-22), up to 7,000 visitors will descend on the town to catch a glimpse of the best high-adrenalin action from the world’s top adventure film-makers.

“It’s the social event of the year for anyone who’s into mountains,” event director Clive Allen says. “And among the world’s mountain film festivals Kendal is known as the party one, no doubt helped by taking place in a former brewery.”
He adds that one of the main attractions is the chance to meet the stars of adventure and exploration. “There are not many sports where you can guarantee you will be rubbing shoulders at the bar with the top performers.”

Among the headline acts are British climber Leo Houlding, who has just returned from a 14-day epic ascent of Mt Asgard, a 1,400m peak in the Canadian Arctic. His achievement left the climbing community in awe.
Not only did Houlding parachute in as if he was in the SAS, he also base jumped off the summit. The film of the adventure, by climbing team-mate Alastair Lee, is one of the most eagerly anticipated in the festival line-up.
“If the experience had been any harder we would have freaked. It was really dangerous, too,” Houlding says. “Due to global warming there was a lot of rock fall, house size boulders were coming down. It was way more ‘out there’ than the Himalayas.”

Also speaking is the French “Spiderman” Alain Robert, who solo climbs skyscrapers with no ropes or safety equipment. (“He’s never spoken in the UK before,” Allen says.) In addition, Tarka L’Herpiniere and Katie-Jane Cooper will describe their recent fight for survival in Patagonia (featured on these pages recently).

Other highlights include the premiere of The Wildest Dream, a film about Mallory and Irvine’s fateful climb on Everest in 1924. And there are dozens of speakers, from Himalayan climbing legend Doug Scott to Major Phil Packer, the Iraq war veteran who, despite being paraplegic, has gone on to run the marathon, row the channel and climb the 3,000ft-high vertical rock face of El Capitan in California by making the equivalent of 4,254 pull-ups.

Another person who has come back from serious injury is the 33-year-old Norwegian base jumper Karina Hollekim. Until a few years ago she was one of the world’s top extreme athletes, regularly photographed skiing off cliffs and base jumping off mountains. Then, in 2006, a routine jump went wrong, her parachute failed, she hit the ground and shattered both legs. Lucky to survive, she was told she would never walk again. Three years and 20 operations later she has done just that.

Skiing and base jumping are out of the question, but Hollekim will tell the Kendal audience how she has been forced to be content with more mundane challenges, such as finding the motivation to face the day. “I appreciate things in a different way because I know how it feels to have what you love taken away from you,” she says.
Despite the extreme nature of her chosen career path, she feels her story is universal. “We all have setbacks, whether illness or the loss of someone close. We all need to find the strength and motivation to get back up on our feet,” Hollekim explains.

“Hers is a fantastic story,” Allen says. “She really bust herself up.”

Hollekim is speaking as part of The North Face Free Flight Night. Other themes in the programme of lectures and films include mountain biking and adrenalin. There will also be mountain art and literature on display. And there is an adventure film academy for anyone looking to get into film-making themselves.

Tickets (01539 725 133; www.mountainfest.co.uk)

Telegraph.co.uk

The Lake District National Park has announced a series of events in support of Cumbria Green Build Fortnight, which is due to begin on October 5th.

A number of activities will be taking place to highlight the green developments that have been made across the area, something that may interest those that are booking holidays in the Lake District.

Around 2,000 people are expected to attend, with 80 free events being held, ranging from demonstrations of eco-homes to seminars for environmental professionals.

The festival is now in its fourth year and has received £5,000 of investment from the Lake District Sustainable Development Fund.

“There are events for all – from information fairs to master classes – and whether it’’’s related to home, business or community there will be something to help you become more sustainable,” said Diane Hubbard of organisers Cumbria Action for Sustainability.

Volunteers were recently asked to contribute to a green project in the Lake District that involves the removal of harmful rhododendrons from land around Askham Bridge.

Written by David Sollberger

Families planning to take their young children to the Lake District later this month may be interested to learn that one of TV’s best-loved characters is due to make an appearance there.

Those travelling on the Lake District’s Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway on September 27th and 28th will have the chance to meet Postman Pat and his cat Jess.

During their journey, children can take part in a postcard quiz and win a range of prizes, before meeting Pat and his cat at Dalegarth station.

Youngsters can have their photographs taken with the famous duo and enjoy colouring activities and face painting.

Meanwhile, parents can keep themselves occupied by browsing craft stalls at the station and sampling some of the tasty homemade food on offer.

In related news, those planning to stay in hotels in the Lake District will find plenty of other attractions to explore, including the Lakes Aquarium which is home to otters, marmosets and piranhas, among other things.