India, Dec. 27 -- Romanticists and British poets have long praised the beauty of the Lake District of England-but that actually wasn't always the case.

In the mid-18th century, "Robinson Crusoe" author Daniel Defoe called it the "most barren and frightful of any [place] that I have passed over in England," echoing a common sentiment at the time. However, local creatives such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge later began to pen lofty odes to its glacial lakes, wide meadows, and jutting hills. Thanks to their nature-focused poems, a love for the U.K.'s natural landscapes was sparked, and visitors soon followed. Many years later, in 1951, the area became a national park.

"There's something almost like a storybook about it,"...