An insider guide to the Lake District
A large part of my childhood was spent in the English Lakes, with never a mention of abroad. Other Manchester families went to Europe and even the USA, but to us travel was something that started at junction 19 of the M6 and ended 80 minutes later in Ullswater. Strangely, it never got boring. The multifarious landscape of the Lake District is one of its miracles: mountain passes and tarns; ruddy weeded wild-grass moors and conical pikes; pretty rivers and winter-flooded marshlands and scree dotted with free-roaming Herdwick sheep that look wild as hell; verges of sweet September wild parsley and elderflower and even sweeter posters in bus stops for am-dram productions of Arsenic and Old Lace.
Strange events and mysteries are everywhere, from the village submerged under Thirlmere to the melancholy sundial in memory of some long-dead Bengal lancer at St Johns in the Vale near the Castelrigg stone circle, and ancient coffin trails under Rydale Mount running bleakly west to the Nab Scar. As for the weather, this is a region that brings out the vigour of those who visit. Rain on the ferries labouring across Windermere and Coniston Water, and rain obscuring the tiny figures on distant fells and spurting down the genteel buildings of Keswick. But when the sun does come out and the whole place explodes with foliage, everything seems hilarious. Naked babies playing in the pebbled pools along Coniston wave euphoric fingers towards the peaks of the Blawith Fells; cyclists puff past the Whinlatter Forest where mushrooms glimmer in the roots.
The Lake District didn't even get its name until 1730. These remote northern counties of Cumberland, bordered by the Irish Sea and the Pennines, were considered lost, barren frontier counties sheltering desperados. But by 1802, the place had become a cultural phenomenon, made suddenly famous by some of our very best painters and poets, and beloved for its scenic walks (see our guide to the best walks in the Lake District). The District's valleys only add up to a distance of 33 miles west to east and yet, bar the dog days, the place seems able to absorb everyone. It's the second great miracle of the region, and not fully comprehensible - a party trick on the scale of Penn and Teller.
Pictured: a view of Buttermere and Crummock Water from Hay Stacks, in the Lake District
WHERE TO STAY
GILPIN HOTEL AND LAKE HOUSE
On a hillside a 10-minute drive from Windermere, Gilpin Hotel is spread across 21 acres of beautiful grounds. The calm bedrooms range from garden suites with outdoor hot tubs to new spa lodges fitted with a stone bath, sauna and hydrotherapy tub. Or for a truly spoiling treat, take over the six-bedroom Lake House just a mile away, which has a spa, boathouse overlooking the water, hot tub and swimming pool, creating a unique country-house feel.
Start your day with a long outdoor breakfast before heading to nearby Loughrigg Fell (a steep climb but worth it for incredible panoramic views across Grasmere, Windermere and Rydal Water). In autumn and winter, cosy up after a bracing walk next to the burning fire and make use of the hotel’s sauna and steam room.
In the evening, try the hotel’s Michelin-starred Hrishi restaurant for a fun and creative tasting menu and innovative dishes made using local Lake District produce such as chilli-glazed poached lobster and cauliflower granita. Or book a table at Gilpin Spice for a laidback supper of tapas-style pan-Asian plates.
All the details are thought through here, making for a rather idyllic British break.
Address: Gilpin Hotel and Lake House, Crook Road, Windermere LA23 3NE
Telephone: +44 15394 88818
Price: Doubles from £245
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THE BLACK BULL, SEDBERGH
A market-town-handsome, unspoiled 17th-century Cumbrian coaching inn, The Black Bull (pictured above) stands in the centre of the venerable literary town of Sedbergh, where even bus stops house shelves of second-hand editions for passers-by in sudden need of Wordsworth. There’s a jolly buzz in town about the food at the Bull – Japanese-German chef Nina Ratcliffe, who runs the inn with her locally born husband James, serves well-sourced, animal-welfare-conscious dishes with the occasional Asian touch, all kitchen-garden vegetables and foraged berries, as fresh and peppery-sweet as the rain-plump grass all the way up Winder Fell just beyond, with its countless swooping blackbirds. A Victorian tiled floor and deep-wood pub-bar might be oppressive if it weren’t for the enormous windows and red leather seats and bunches of wild flowers hanging from beams. Up the stairs are 18 bedrooms with inimitable, Norse-resonant Cumbrian names such as Frostrow and Tarn Rigg, and solid sunlight falls in from an old, gigantic atrium window patterned with a couple of contemplative bulls. There are big, soft beds, throws and cushions made of Herdwick wool, and a truly covetable, subtle bathroom range called Petrichor (meaning ‘the smell of rain’), concocted exclusively for the Bull by The Sedbergh Soap Company, that made me think of tender watercress shoots and buttercups. At breakfast guests are encouraged to take home-baked jam doughnuts and scones away with them, should hunger strike later on. One of many successful touches.
Read our full review of The Black Bull
Address: The Black Bull, 44 Main Street, Sedbergh, Cumbria, LA10
Telephone: +44 15396 20264
Price: Doubles from £125
Book your stayTHE LODGE, EDENHALL
I think the Lake District's particularly romantic air of magical isolation and spiritual elevation comes from being not just all about water, but wrapped on all sides by that element too: The Solway Firth, Morecombe Bay, the Cumberland coast and the River Eden, where in a January storm I stayed at The Lodge, pictured, a perfectly private, stove-warmed, frontier-style wooden cabin hand-carved from larch on the banks of its tributary, the Eamont. The river was so high it rushed by in a frenzy, salmon somewhere deep beneath the spinning underboil.
Address: Edenhall Estate, The Courtyard, Edenhall, Penrith, Cumbria CA11 8ST
Telephone: +44 117 204 7830
Price: The Lodge sleeps 6, for £270 per night
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ANOTHER PLACE, ULLSWATER
The low-key country-house hotel, sister of Cornwall's Watergate Bay, has uninterrupted views of the lake and 18 acres of land to explore. Each day, a blackboard is scrawled with walking ideas and water sports. And there are a couple of brilliant restaurants within the hotel, too.
Read our full review of Another Place in our edit of the best hotels in the UK.
Address: Another Place, Watermillock, Ullswater, Penrith CA11 0LP
Telephone: +44 17684 86442
Price: Doubles from £200
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ASKHAM HALL, PENRITH
In a little-known area between Ullswater and the Eden Valley, is a Grade I-listed manor house that's packed with history, charm and personality but is also funky, contemporary and eclectic. Owner Charlie Lowther has, with the permission of his mother Caroline, Countess of Lonsdale, refurbished and reinvented his beautiful family home, with its medieval peel tower and surrounding romantic gardens. The rooms range from the extraordinary (Lonsdale, with a marvellously OTT canopied bathroom ceiling and matching wallpaper teeming with busy Balinese prints) to the nicely different (Park View, overlooking the River Lowther, with a gilded and mirrored door, open drench shower, antique sleigh bed and table for two in the window).
Address: Askham Hall, Askham, Near Penrith, Cumbria
Telephone: +44 1931 712350
Price: Doubles from £150
Book your stayBy Fiona Duncan. Published in 2014
HOWTHWAITE, GRASMERE
Howthwaite stands on a ridge overlooking the lake and village of Grasmere, and it's a perfect, largely unaltered example of the kind of solid villa built when the Lake District was establishing itself as a paradise for the likes of Beatrix Potter. Contemplatively quiet and gorgeously simple, the sloping gardens run steeply into those at the back of no less than Dove Cottage on the road below. 'This, our little domestic slip of mountain', wrote the 29-year-old William Wordsworth of these very gardens when he rented Dove Cottage for £8 a year with his sister Dorothy from 1799 to 1808, staking out beans behind his back door (they're still there). He would lie motionless on his bed with an uninterrupted and worshipful view of the lake he loved the most. When other houses were built later, somewhat obscuring his view, WW vociferously complained, worrying about over-development and over-gentrification and fuss and noise in an endearingly bustling, local warrior way. He preferred to live and write plainly; it felt more moral.
Address: Houthwaite, Howe Head Lane, Cumbria
Telephone: +44 1628 825925
Price: Four nights from £577, sleeps eight
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THE MALABAR, SEDBERGH
A wonderfully welcoming guesthouse in a Grade II-listed barn, splashed with the vibrant pinks, reds and oranges of India. Owner Graham Lappin grew up on a tea estate in Kerala and the place is filled with antiques (carved wooden elephants, brass tiffins) from his family home, alongside bold British art such as a striking oil of a bull by Bath-based Joanne Cope. Graham and his wife Fiona lived in Mumbai and Hong Kong for years They moved back permanently after finding an abandoned farm in Cumbria with bags of potential and opened this restored barn as a gorgeous B&B in spring 2016. Each of the six bedrooms is different. The cherry-red and teal colour scheme in Ladbroke – a big, bright suite on the ground floor – was inspired by cabinets Fiona bought in Rajasthan. Earlston, under the eaves, is bathed in the lovely glow from a lampshade the colour of Fanta orange, with a wicker planter's chair by the window that's just made for dozing. Hidden behind heavy, barn-like doors that slide on casters, each bathroom has a deep standalone tub, and gorgeous lotions from the local Bath House company.
Address: The Malabar, Garths, Marthwaite, Sedbergh, Cumbria LA10 5ED
Telephone: +44 1539 620200
Price: Doubles from £140
Book your stayBy Grainne McBride. Published in 2016
GOSSEL RIDDING, WINDERMERE
The same Westmerian family that built Lakeland churches in the 16th century and Windermere's pretty railway station crafted - and that is the word - Gossel Ridding in 1908. As a child, George Henry Pattinson would tend his father's sheep on a hill above Windermere, casting his eyes longingly down over the lake and up Troutbeck Valley. The view was impossibly lovely, and he wanted to possess it or frame it at least in the window of the house that he built when he was older. Leased now in its entirety for weddings or parties, Gossel Ridding is Arts and Crafts perfection: a carved oak interior from one vast tree rescued from the garden after a storm and rooms for billiards and reading. Over a century later, George's view remains undisturbed. Simultaneously awe-inspiring and comely, wild but flawlessly composed, it enjoys the epic tenderness of spring green and September orange in the sunsets stretching vast and away to the Langdales and down the meandering lake to the south.
Address: Gossel Ridding, Craig Walk, Bowness-on-Windermere, LA23
Telephone: +44 7810 091008
Price: Three nights cost £4,500, sleeps 13
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Where to eat in the Lake District
QUEEN'S HEAD INN, PENRITH
In the Lake District, eat pie. Specifically a table-groaning, orgiastic, Cumbrian blow-out of a pie handmade on the premises by a publican/pie-man wearing a jolly blue-striped apron, rugger arms propped briefly on the bar for a breather, serving whisky and lemonade to a group of delirious pensioners pie-stuffed during a Wednesday lunchtime binge. People come for miles for the award-winning black-pudding pie (and local game pie and lamb and mint) at the Queen's Head Inn, with its interior of dark-singed oak and a fireplace carved in 1719. The crust falls across you like a pavement. Time thickens, and pet dogs beg shamelessly for morsels. All the talk is of pie: Pony Club reunion suppers that didn't quite hit the pie-nail on the pie-head; whether certain members of the royal family might be tempted to enjoy this chicken and mushroom. Prince Charles came here once, someone says, and had a whisky. But this was before he married Camilla. Oh, and that poor Duchess. She's a lovely girl.
Address: Queen's Head Inn, Tirril, Penrith, CA10
Telephone: +44 1768 863219
Website: queensheadinn.co.ukTHE JUMBLE ROOM, GRASMERE
Fine dining hit the Lakes decades ago with chefs sending forth amuse-bouches of pea-ice to diners previously content with things dipped in puddles of Hellmann's. There are now as many farmers' markets and food festivals and awards in Cumbria as the Cotswolds and you can eat as daintily or as ethically or locally sourced as you could wish in restaurants and country- house hotels where waiters loom like footmen and crystal glasses are perpetually being raised in appreciation. If, like me, 10-course homages to the majesty of appetite leave you flattened, then the Jumble Room, pictured, hidden down a lane in a Grasmere village, redresses the balance: casual but still birthday-special, with delicate, delicious starters (spiced almond fritters) and don't-mess-with-us puddings.
Address: The Jumble Room, Langdale Road, Grasmere, Ambleside, LA22
Telephone: +44 15394 35188
Website: thejumbleroom.co.ukTHE DRUNKEN DUCK, NEAR AMBLESIDE
A beautifully renovated hill-bound pub that brews its own ale and serves a devastating smoked-haddock-and-cheese soufflé to barristers who've floored it up the M6 in vintage Austins, as well as locals giving off a whiff of sheep. The views of Langdale Pike and Black Crag out the back of The Drunken Duck compete with the pub's mini-tarn and family of otters playing insouciantly on a central island. It has the best beer garden in England, even if you're sitting in a gale with your newspaper wrapped around your face.
Address: The Drunken Duck, Barngates, Ambleside, LA22
Telephone: +44 15394 36347
Website: drunkenduckinn.co.ukTHE PHEASANT, BASSENTHWAITE LAKE
Genteelly crumbling, discreetly peeling, The Pheasant is old fashioned in the very best way, with wives of county farmers enveloped in clouds of Shalimar and brigadiers pulling Nuremberg Remembered from the bookshelves. Wellingtons, however encrusted, are tolerated in the dining and sitting rooms, and actively welcomed in the snug, with its walls the colour of a bison after more than four centuries of fire and pipe smoke.
Address: The Pheasant, Bassenthwaite Lake, Cockermouth CA13
Telephone: +44 17687 76234
Website: the-pheasant.co.ukTHE GEORGE AND DRAGON, CLIFTON
Owned and run by the son of local gentry, with produce from nearby Askham Hall, the George & Dragon puts everyone in a doting mood. Cumbrian grandmothers, usually unsentimental, shrug off their windbreakers and go through the menu with delighted astonishment. The staff are all teenagers from nearby villages, swiping each other with tea towels and jogging to and from the kitchen where lunch dishes tinkle into the very late afternoon and start up again for supper: there are always happy people here enjoying Bloody Mary's and cake or something on toast. The 12 B&B rooms upstairs are all very chic.
Address: Clifton, Penrith CA10
Telephone: +44 1768 865381
Website: georgeanddragonclifton.co.uk
Prices: Doubles in the B&B from £110Like this? Now read:
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