Seathwaite (Borrowdale) is the wettest inhabited place in England, receiving approximately
140 inches of rain per year. As the local guide leading Dorothy’s party remarked,
they were fortunate to have a clear day with spectacular views.

The account that follows does not draw, as Wordsworth seems to imply, from one of
his own letters, but instead from one of Dorothy’s, which she wrote to William Johnson
in October 1818. This letter, which Dorothy copied into one of her notebooks, recorded
her recent excursion up Scafell Pike with her friend Mary Barker and three others.

Working from manuscripts in the Wordsworth Library, Owen and Smyser published this
incomplete work as an appendix to the Guide (“Appendix II: An Unpublished Tour”) in their 1974 edition of Wordsworth’s prose.