THE CAPITAL OF ROMANCE

Love – and the delicious aroma of gingerbread – are in the air in Grasmere where this is likely to be a busy month

- Mike Glover

When it comes to romance there is little doubt that Grasmere takes the biscuit. Visitors flock to the Lake District village where the doyen of romantic poets William Wordsworth had three homes and is buried in the parish churchyard. And when they arrive in what Wordsworth called ‘the loveliest spot that man hath ever found’, they are spoilt for choice on how to celebrate their own romantic relationships.

This February there is a double dose of opportunities to let the one you love know of your affections, with St Valentine’s Day on the 14th and the Leap Day on the 29th being a day when tradition dictates that women can propose to men. One of Grasmere’s iconic brands is gearing up for an avalanche of love-linked purchases. Sarah Nelson’s Celebrated Grasmere Gingerbread has been supplying its unique biscuit-cum-cake at the former village school next to St Oswald’s Church for more than 150 years. The current guardian of the secret recipe, which is kept in the vaults of the Nat West Bank in Windermere, is Andrew Hunter. His wife and partner Joanne is from the third generation of the Wilson family who took over the inheritance. Their daughter Yasmine, the marketing manager, is the fourth.

‘This being leap year we expect to see lots of women ordering hearts with which to propose,’ said Joanne. A nine-inch version carrying the legend ‘Marry me’ is just one version that can be customised to secure a betrothal.

‘Gingerbread is used by lots of people to ask partners to marry them. It is a tradition going back to mediaeval times when gingerbread was considered an aphrodisiac.’