Things to do in Ambleside
Ambleside has perhaps succumbed too much to tourism, but given the town's superb location this was inevitable and the wonder is that there is still so much to see. Best of all, perhaps, is the oldest part of the town, in narrow streets climbing above the flood plain of the River Rothay to Above Stock; the former chapel of St Anne's, the old house of How Head, the grey slate farmhouses and the Golden Rule, a marvellously unspoilt pub, make a fine combination.
Less attractive are the overcrowded market place, with its myriad gift shops, and the Bridge House, possibly built in the seventeenth century as a summerhouse for Ambleside Hall but now just one of the National Trust's odder properties. The parish church, built in the 1850s and designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is the successor to the chapel in Above Stock.
Ambleside mills
A number of mills can be seen: the Old Mill, now a pottery, was formerly a corn mill and dates from the fourteenth century, while a converted bobbin mill can be seen upstream, together with the remains of mill races. Still further upstream is Stockghyll Force, much visited by the early tourists and in a pleasantly wooded ravine but for all that a minor waterfall. At Waterhead there is a steamer service along the length of Windermere, while at the head of the lake are the remains of Ambleside's precursor, the Roman fort of Gala va. Amongst the many events in the town's calendar are the Ambleside Sports, held on the Thursday before the first Monday in July, and the rushbearing ceremony, which takes place on the first Saturday in July.
Lake district towns and villages
Askham, attractively situated above the Lowther valley, is a particularly good example of an Anglian green village, with farms and cottages set around a long, narrow central green. The village was one of several purchased by the Lowthers when they were ensconced in the nearby castle and at the height of their power in the eighteenth century. Little survives from before this period, though Askham Hall dates in part from the fourteenth century.
Backbarrow is an industrial hamlet in the Leven valley, with the remains of the most ambitious of Lakeland's iron furnaces, originally built in 1711, and other relics of the heyday of water power. The 'Dolly Blue' works closed only recently and has been converted into an hotel and timeshare complex.
Bampton is an unremarkable village in the Lowther valley, passed through by many on their way to Haweswater reservoir and Mardale Head. The name of the pub, the St Patrick's Well Inn, recalls the legend that St Patrick walked to Bampton after having been shipwrecked on Duddon Sands in 540AD. The nearby hamlet of Bampton Grange was originally an outlying farm of Shap Abbey.
Bassenthwaite village not only stands well away from the lake of the same nae, but it is also shunned by the two churches with which its name is associated. The older of the two, that of St Bega, lies two miles to the south, along an unmade track by the lake shore; it has a Norman chancel arch but little else escaped the Victorian restorers. St John, an elaborate edifice of 1878, is situated close to the village school in the hamlet of Chapel. The centre of the village, though, is the irregular green around which a mixture of slategrey cottages and newer houses cluster.
Bassenthwaite Lake, although it sits prettily at the foot of Skiddaw's western outliers and is especially attractive when seen from them (the view down the lake from the little subsidiary peak of Dodd is reasonably accessible and very pleasant), is really too far divorced from the central core of the Lake District to yield a great deal which is spectacular. Some four miles in length and fourth largest of the lakes, it has the fast, noisy A66 along the bulk of its western shore and is perhaps best approached from the east, either at Bassenthwaite's older church or near Mirehouse, where the house and grounds are open at certain times. The northern section of the lake is used by the Bassenthwaite Sailing Club. Since 1979 the lake has been owned by the Lake District Special Planning Board.
Black Combe is the forgotten fell of the Lake District, its smooth slopes covering a huge area in the extreme southwest yet so far removed from the mountain core as to be scarcely glimpsed from most of the central fells. Yet it is of unusual interest, being composed of an outcrop of Skiddaw Slates encircled by Borrowdale Volcanics, and with one of the Lake District's rare stone circles on the slopes of its northeastern spur, Swinside Fell. Monk Foss, at the foot of its western slopes, was one of Furness Abbey's properties until 1242, when it passed into the hands of David de Mulcaster. Wordsworth was sufficiently impressed to write a poem about the fell in 1813 View from the top of Black Combe.
Blea Tarn must be the most common tarn name in the district though arguably the best is actually called Blea Water; this one is the deepest of all the tarns and nestles in a corrie plucked out of the higher slopes of High Street and Mardale III Bell. The best known Blea Tarn sits in an upland hollow between Great Langdale and Little Langdale, is owned by the National Trust, and has excellent and striking views of the Langdale Pikes.
Blencathra, still occasionally called Saddleback after the distinctive profile of the summit plateau, is one of the great mountains of Britain, with a succession of splendid routes up the ridges and intervening gullies which make up its distinctive southern face and, tucked around its eastern flank, the spectacular rocky arete of Sharp Edge above Scales Tam.
The best of the southern approaches is from Gategill, ascending Hall's Fell and the exciting Narrow Edge to arrive exactly at the summit. Blencathra's name is of Celtic origin, and so too is that of the Glenderamackin, the river which meanders around its northern, eastern and southern flanks; the walk along the valley on a green path from Mungrisdale is delightful. To the west the Glenderaterra Beck divides Blencathra from Skiddaw.
Boot is a splendid base for exploring upper Eskdale, with two inns (the Burnmoor and, somewhat away from the hamlet, the Woolpack, formerly catering for the packhorse trains) and a variety of other accommodation. There is plenty to be seen in and around the hamlet: the remains of iron ore mines, the packhorse bridge over the Whillan Beck and the adjacent com mill, painstakingly restored and now open to the public, and the chapel of St Catherine, down by the River Esk, here at its most delightful with wooded banks, rocky gorges and stepping stones. A fine walk leaves Boot over the packhorse bridge, then climbs alongside the beck to reach Burnmoor, with its burial mounds, secluded tam and excellent views towards and across Wasdale.
Borrowdale is the Lake District dale par excellence, with a classic lake, with its gentle sylvan beauty, giving way to the rugged slopes of dramatic fells higher up the dale. There is something for everyone, notably the sight of Derwentwater from a whole series of splendid if somewhat hackneyed viewpoints such as Friar's Crag, Ashness Bridge or the Surprise View, the subdued and intricate landscape of the mid-valley around Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, and the fellwalkers' paradise around Seathwaite, with paths striking off in all directions at the start of classic expeditions to Great Gable, Great End, Scafell Pike and the other major peaks.
But there is much more the unusual, such as the glacial erratic known as the Bowder Stone; the picturesque, including the Lodore Falls; and the historic, represented by the hill fort on Castle Crag. Rock climbers will make for Shepherd's Crag, botanists for Johnny Wood, with its ferns and liverworts, and others for man-made attractions such as the bridge at Grangein Borrowdale.
Bowfell, though it is seen to advantage from Langstrath, where its bleak northern cliffs stand above Angle Tam, and from upper Eskdale, where the mountain takes on the appearance of a rocky pyramid, really belongs to Langdale, and is probably climbed most frequently from there, along the rising slopes of The Band to Three Tams a desolate and windswept spot between Bowfell and Crinkle Crags and then either direct to the summit or, more excitingly, along the climbers' traverse below Flat Crag and the jagged outline of Cambridge Crag to the awesome Bowfell Buttress.
The top of Bowfell is a jumbled mass of naked rock, with a nice little rocky pyramid for the summit itself. The views are exceptional, too, with a very good profile of the Scafell range and a long prospect down the Esk valley to the Irish Sea.
Bowness hotels the Lake District
If you are looking for a Lake District hotel, and you want to be close to the main attractions of the lakes, look no further than Bowness. This pretty town on Windermere is home to some of the best guesthouses, Lake District cottages and boutique hotels you will find in the Lake District.
Bowness, which has now coalesced with Windermere town, is the closer of the two to the lake and has therefore developed a considerable range of facilities for the tourists who congregate here. It does still have its attractions, however, with a pleasant town centre behind the promenade at Bowness Bay, where there is a steamer pier and a variety of boats for hire. Here too is a theatre and a steamboat museum. Nearby Adelaide Hill has a very good overall view of Windermere lake.
Braithwaite has seen a good deal of recent housing development and has not grown in attractiveness as a result. This was the original location of the Cumberland Pencil Company, which began here in 1868 but moved to Keswick thirty years later after a disastrous fire. The Coledale Inn was at one time the factory manager's house. Now the village has a rather suburban feel to it Keswick is close at hand along the intrusive A66, which bypasses Braithwaite though it is nicely situated at the foot of the Whinlatter Pass and the ascent of Grisedale Pike, a very worthwhile expedition, starts not far from the village.
Brotherilkeld is the highest farm in Eskdale (though Taw House across the Esk is not too far downstream) and has been so since it was first established by the Norse settlers. The farm was sold to the monks of Furness Abbey in 1242 and has since functioned as the centre of a massive sheeprearing enterprise. The present farmhouse, long, low and white, dates from the great rebuilding in the Lake District during the heyday of the statesmen farmers in the seventeenth century. A magnificent walk hereabouts follows the Esk upstream to Lingcove Bridge; at higher level the Hardknott Roman fort can also be reached without too much difficulty.
Brothers Water, shallow, reed-fringed and small, is sometimes regarded as a reservoir because of its straight shorelines but is in fact a natural lake at the head of the Patterdale valley, close to the picturesque village of Hartsop and at the foot of the climb to the Kirkstone Pass. The lake was once a great deal larger, and its straight southern shore represents the edge of a mass of deposited material which fills the valley as far as the mouth of Dovedale. It is possible, too, that Brothers Water was once joined to Ullswater; certainly there is a narrow, flat valley floor between the two lakes. Few walkers visit the lake, though there is access to the western side, and the added interest of prehistoric homesteads close at hand.
Less attractive are the overcrowded market place, with its myriad gift shops, and the Bridge House, possibly built in the seventeenth century as a summerhouse for Ambleside Hall but now just one of the National Trust's odder properties. The parish church, built in the 1850s and designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is the successor to the chapel in Above Stock.
Ambleside mills
A number of mills can be seen: the Old Mill, now a pottery, was formerly a corn mill and dates from the fourteenth century, while a converted bobbin mill can be seen upstream, together with the remains of mill races. Still further upstream is Stockghyll Force, much visited by the early tourists and in a pleasantly wooded ravine but for all that a minor waterfall. At Waterhead there is a steamer service along the length of Windermere, while at the head of the lake are the remains of Ambleside's precursor, the Roman fort of Gala va. Amongst the many events in the town's calendar are the Ambleside Sports, held on the Thursday before the first Monday in July, and the rushbearing ceremony, which takes place on the first Saturday in July.
Lake district towns and villages
Askham, attractively situated above the Lowther valley, is a particularly good example of an Anglian green village, with farms and cottages set around a long, narrow central green. The village was one of several purchased by the Lowthers when they were ensconced in the nearby castle and at the height of their power in the eighteenth century. Little survives from before this period, though Askham Hall dates in part from the fourteenth century.
Backbarrow is an industrial hamlet in the Leven valley, with the remains of the most ambitious of Lakeland's iron furnaces, originally built in 1711, and other relics of the heyday of water power. The 'Dolly Blue' works closed only recently and has been converted into an hotel and timeshare complex.
Bampton is an unremarkable village in the Lowther valley, passed through by many on their way to Haweswater reservoir and Mardale Head. The name of the pub, the St Patrick's Well Inn, recalls the legend that St Patrick walked to Bampton after having been shipwrecked on Duddon Sands in 540AD. The nearby hamlet of Bampton Grange was originally an outlying farm of Shap Abbey.
Bassenthwaite village not only stands well away from the lake of the same nae, but it is also shunned by the two churches with which its name is associated. The older of the two, that of St Bega, lies two miles to the south, along an unmade track by the lake shore; it has a Norman chancel arch but little else escaped the Victorian restorers. St John, an elaborate edifice of 1878, is situated close to the village school in the hamlet of Chapel. The centre of the village, though, is the irregular green around which a mixture of slategrey cottages and newer houses cluster.
Bassenthwaite Lake, although it sits prettily at the foot of Skiddaw's western outliers and is especially attractive when seen from them (the view down the lake from the little subsidiary peak of Dodd is reasonably accessible and very pleasant), is really too far divorced from the central core of the Lake District to yield a great deal which is spectacular. Some four miles in length and fourth largest of the lakes, it has the fast, noisy A66 along the bulk of its western shore and is perhaps best approached from the east, either at Bassenthwaite's older church or near Mirehouse, where the house and grounds are open at certain times. The northern section of the lake is used by the Bassenthwaite Sailing Club. Since 1979 the lake has been owned by the Lake District Special Planning Board.
Black Combe is the forgotten fell of the Lake District, its smooth slopes covering a huge area in the extreme southwest yet so far removed from the mountain core as to be scarcely glimpsed from most of the central fells. Yet it is of unusual interest, being composed of an outcrop of Skiddaw Slates encircled by Borrowdale Volcanics, and with one of the Lake District's rare stone circles on the slopes of its northeastern spur, Swinside Fell. Monk Foss, at the foot of its western slopes, was one of Furness Abbey's properties until 1242, when it passed into the hands of David de Mulcaster. Wordsworth was sufficiently impressed to write a poem about the fell in 1813 View from the top of Black Combe.
Blea Tarn must be the most common tarn name in the district though arguably the best is actually called Blea Water; this one is the deepest of all the tarns and nestles in a corrie plucked out of the higher slopes of High Street and Mardale III Bell. The best known Blea Tarn sits in an upland hollow between Great Langdale and Little Langdale, is owned by the National Trust, and has excellent and striking views of the Langdale Pikes.
Blencathra, still occasionally called Saddleback after the distinctive profile of the summit plateau, is one of the great mountains of Britain, with a succession of splendid routes up the ridges and intervening gullies which make up its distinctive southern face and, tucked around its eastern flank, the spectacular rocky arete of Sharp Edge above Scales Tam.
The best of the southern approaches is from Gategill, ascending Hall's Fell and the exciting Narrow Edge to arrive exactly at the summit. Blencathra's name is of Celtic origin, and so too is that of the Glenderamackin, the river which meanders around its northern, eastern and southern flanks; the walk along the valley on a green path from Mungrisdale is delightful. To the west the Glenderaterra Beck divides Blencathra from Skiddaw.
Boot is a splendid base for exploring upper Eskdale, with two inns (the Burnmoor and, somewhat away from the hamlet, the Woolpack, formerly catering for the packhorse trains) and a variety of other accommodation. There is plenty to be seen in and around the hamlet: the remains of iron ore mines, the packhorse bridge over the Whillan Beck and the adjacent com mill, painstakingly restored and now open to the public, and the chapel of St Catherine, down by the River Esk, here at its most delightful with wooded banks, rocky gorges and stepping stones. A fine walk leaves Boot over the packhorse bridge, then climbs alongside the beck to reach Burnmoor, with its burial mounds, secluded tam and excellent views towards and across Wasdale.
Borrowdale is the Lake District dale par excellence, with a classic lake, with its gentle sylvan beauty, giving way to the rugged slopes of dramatic fells higher up the dale. There is something for everyone, notably the sight of Derwentwater from a whole series of splendid if somewhat hackneyed viewpoints such as Friar's Crag, Ashness Bridge or the Surprise View, the subdued and intricate landscape of the mid-valley around Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, and the fellwalkers' paradise around Seathwaite, with paths striking off in all directions at the start of classic expeditions to Great Gable, Great End, Scafell Pike and the other major peaks.
But there is much more the unusual, such as the glacial erratic known as the Bowder Stone; the picturesque, including the Lodore Falls; and the historic, represented by the hill fort on Castle Crag. Rock climbers will make for Shepherd's Crag, botanists for Johnny Wood, with its ferns and liverworts, and others for man-made attractions such as the bridge at Grangein Borrowdale.
Bowfell, though it is seen to advantage from Langstrath, where its bleak northern cliffs stand above Angle Tam, and from upper Eskdale, where the mountain takes on the appearance of a rocky pyramid, really belongs to Langdale, and is probably climbed most frequently from there, along the rising slopes of The Band to Three Tams a desolate and windswept spot between Bowfell and Crinkle Crags and then either direct to the summit or, more excitingly, along the climbers' traverse below Flat Crag and the jagged outline of Cambridge Crag to the awesome Bowfell Buttress.
The top of Bowfell is a jumbled mass of naked rock, with a nice little rocky pyramid for the summit itself. The views are exceptional, too, with a very good profile of the Scafell range and a long prospect down the Esk valley to the Irish Sea.
Bowness hotels the Lake District
If you are looking for a Lake District hotel, and you want to be close to the main attractions of the lakes, look no further than Bowness. This pretty town on Windermere is home to some of the best guesthouses, Lake District cottages and boutique hotels you will find in the Lake District.
Bowness, which has now coalesced with Windermere town, is the closer of the two to the lake and has therefore developed a considerable range of facilities for the tourists who congregate here. It does still have its attractions, however, with a pleasant town centre behind the promenade at Bowness Bay, where there is a steamer pier and a variety of boats for hire. Here too is a theatre and a steamboat museum. Nearby Adelaide Hill has a very good overall view of Windermere lake.
Braithwaite has seen a good deal of recent housing development and has not grown in attractiveness as a result. This was the original location of the Cumberland Pencil Company, which began here in 1868 but moved to Keswick thirty years later after a disastrous fire. The Coledale Inn was at one time the factory manager's house. Now the village has a rather suburban feel to it Keswick is close at hand along the intrusive A66, which bypasses Braithwaite though it is nicely situated at the foot of the Whinlatter Pass and the ascent of Grisedale Pike, a very worthwhile expedition, starts not far from the village.
Brotherilkeld is the highest farm in Eskdale (though Taw House across the Esk is not too far downstream) and has been so since it was first established by the Norse settlers. The farm was sold to the monks of Furness Abbey in 1242 and has since functioned as the centre of a massive sheeprearing enterprise. The present farmhouse, long, low and white, dates from the great rebuilding in the Lake District during the heyday of the statesmen farmers in the seventeenth century. A magnificent walk hereabouts follows the Esk upstream to Lingcove Bridge; at higher level the Hardknott Roman fort can also be reached without too much difficulty.
Brothers Water, shallow, reed-fringed and small, is sometimes regarded as a reservoir because of its straight shorelines but is in fact a natural lake at the head of the Patterdale valley, close to the picturesque village of Hartsop and at the foot of the climb to the Kirkstone Pass. The lake was once a great deal larger, and its straight southern shore represents the edge of a mass of deposited material which fills the valley as far as the mouth of Dovedale. It is possible, too, that Brothers Water was once joined to Ullswater; certainly there is a narrow, flat valley floor between the two lakes. Few walkers visit the lake, though there is access to the western side, and the added interest of prehistoric homesteads close at hand.
Labels: Bowness hotels the Lake District
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