Chris Lloyd floats on high o'er vales and hills to a loop in the River Tees and discovers a host of golden connections with two of England's most famous poets.

ON a peninsula made by the Tees, where the great river winds itself almost into a noose, two of our finest poets found their hearts ensnared by a pair of sisters.

For one, it was a love that would last a lifetime. For the other, it was a romance that would never quite come right.

But both William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge drew great inspiration from their Hutchinson girls, whom they immortalised in verse along with Sockburn's sylvan scenery.

The Hutchinsons - all ten of them - were born in Penrith, in Cumbria, but when they were orphaned in 1785 they were posted offto relatives no matter how distant - both geographically and genealogically - for bringing up.

It led to a nomadic childhood. For instance Mary, who was born in 1770, was parcelled offto family members in Stockton, nearby Bishopton and much further afield Halifax.

Her schooling, though, was largely in Penrith where she became best friends with the Wordsworth siblings, William and Dorothy.

So friendly were they that Dorothy recalled: "Mary, and her sister Margaret, and I used to steal out to each other's houses, and when we had had our talk over the kitchen fire, to delay the moment of parting, paced up one street and down another by moon or starlight."

Their childhood of lakes and nature ended abruptly in 1787. William went up to Cambridge University and got swept up in the French Revolution, during which he fathered an illegitimate daughter.

Mary was posted to Sockburn, on the Durham banks of the Tees, a handful of miles to the south-east of Darlington, where her brother, Thomas, had been adopted by their great-uncle and stood to inherit a farm.

She kept in touch with the Wordsworths, and once the brother and sister had settled in 1797, in Dorset, they invited Mary to visit.

For all his philandering in France, William was very fond of his childhood friend.

He wrote that she was "a phantom of delight when first she gleamed upon my sight".

"Aperfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light."

Mary stayed about six months, and met William's new friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two poets were collaborating on their first publication together, Lyrical Ballads, which was to include Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The book was published in 1798 and raised the men enough money to travel, with Dorothy, around Germany. Wordsworth hated it, and couldn't wait to return to England. But because he had disposed of his Dorset cottage, he had nowhere to go.

So William and Dorothy asked the Hutchinsons if they could stay with them briefly at Sockburn while they house-hunted in the Lake District.

They arrived on May 12, 1799, when the stagecoach dropped them offat Entercommon - a tollbar across the Great North Road (now the A167) just to the north of Great Smeaton (where the Toll Bar filling station is). They were met by Mary's brothers, Thomas and George, who pulled them up onto their horses so that they rode pillion over the Tees and onto the Sockburn peninsula.

As they crossed the river, Wordsworth could hear the barking of the Hutchinsons' four dogs - Dart, Swallow, Music and Prince. All four feature in a Wordsworth poem (Incident Characteristic of a Favourite Dog) in which Dart drowns beneath river ice despite Music's best efforts to save him.

Many of the Hutchinsons had gathered at Sockburn to greet the Wordsworths, partly because William was an emerging celebrity.

Joanna, the youngest sister, wrote in excitement to her cousin: "I dare say you will be surprised when I tell you William and Dolly Wordsworth are arriv'd at Sockburne."

After tea on that first day, the Wordsworths took a short walk around the peninsula and fell in love with its many moods: its pastoral fields, its riverside stretches and its isolated serenity.

The brief stay turned into a seven-month sojourn. By day, William walked the river, from the fishlocks at Dinsdale to the east to the grand bridge at Croft to the west, scribbling as he went; by night, Mary would neatly copy out his rough verses.

Perhaps the most famous of the poems that is said to spring from this time begins: "Itravelled among unknown men Inlands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee."

Itis a homecoming poem about absence making the heart grow fonder for both country and girl.

As summer turned to autumn, Coleridge arrived at Sockburn to assist with the house-hunting. Sparks really flew as around the fire, the already married Coleridge found himself falling in love with another Hutchinson: Sara.

In his sensual poem Love, Coleridge tells of the moment it happened: "She half enclosed me with her arms, She pressed me with a meek embrace: And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face."

The house-hunting rides over the Pennines were a success. The Wordsworths had discovered Dove Cottage (now the Wordsworth museum) at Grasmere.

What scenes there must have been at Sockburn on the morning of December 17, 1799. Two sets of lovers said their farewells and any number of friends bid one another adieu. Offwent the Wordsworths and Coleridge, George Hutchinson riding with them as far as Richmond. Then it was on foot through Wensleydale.

Wordsworth was already working in his mind on a poem - To M.H. - about his last walk with Mary through the Sockburn woods, but five miles out of Richmond he spotted a spot where, in times of yore, a hunted deer had made an enormous leap to escape its pursuer but had expired where it landed at the mouth of a spring.

This inspired Hart-Leap We ll, one of Wordsworth's most analysed poems.

The party rested at Askrigg, visited Hardraw Force and then walked 21 miles through a hailstorm to Sedbergh. Eventually, on December 20, they made it to Dove Cottage.

Wordsworth never returned to Sockburn.

Indeed, soon after, Mary and her brother Thomas left the place inside the noose and took a farm at Brompton near Scarborough.

It was in Brompton Parish Church on October 4, 1802, that Wordsworth - having at last resolved his French affairs - married Mary. She became the bedrock of his life; she may even have had a hand in his most famous of poems, I wander'd lonely as a cloud.

So that's one Sockburn story with a happy ending.

What of the other?

After leaving the peninsula, Sara and her brother George went to live at Bishop Middleham Old Hall. Coleridge began studying at Durham University and would ride down regularly to see her.

Their affair lasted seven years, despite Coleridge's marriage.

In an 1801 letter to a friend he described Sara as "so very good a woman, that I have seldom indeed seen the like of her".

In his poem Asra (you don't have to be an anagram expert to work that one out), he calls her: "Dear Asra, woman beyond utterance dear!" In 1802, his wife bore him his only daughter and he called her Sara.

As Coleridge slipped into opium addiction, the Wordsworths became increasingly appalled at the way he was stringing poor Sara along. They persuaded her to live with them and she became another of Wordsworth's women, along with Mary and Dorothy, supporting and transcribing for him.

So our little loop of the Tees had a profound effect upon one of the greatest poets in the English language.