Fresh air and spectacular scenery (Lake District)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Lake District
Date:	18/05/01 (432 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fresh air, Good walking, Wonderful scenery

Disadvantages: Rains a lot!

The Lake District National Park has to be one of the most beautiful places in England. There is so much to do and so many places to see that there is enough information to write a book let alone an opinion! What I intend to do is tell you about the places that I love in the Lake District and hopefully you will get an idea about whether you would like to visit.

Each time that I have stayed in the Lake District either for a holiday or just for a couple of days I have stayed in Ambleside. I have already written a complete opinion about Ambleside so I won’t go into too much detail here. Suffice it to say that it is a bustling town with plenty of shops, pubs and tea-rooms and it does get very busy indeed in the high season.

Just south of Ambleside is Lake Windermere with boats for hire and organised cruises. You can also catch a boat from Bowness on Windermere across the lake in order to walk up to Near Sawrey and on to Hawkshead. The town of Windermere is popular, also getting crowded in high season.

In the southern part of the Lake District, the village of Coniston dominated by the craggy Old Man of Coniston, 2,635 feet high, stands at the northern end on Coniston Water. The real thrill here for me was to have a ride on the steam powered yacht, the Gondola, which cruises up and down Coniston Water. It was first launched in 1859 and has been featured on one or two of the holiday programmes on TV.

Just to the east of Coniston is Near Sawrey where Beatrix Potter lived for the last years of her life. Her house has been converted into a museum of her life and you can stand in the garden looking over the gate where Jemima Puddleduck lived! The pub in Near Sawrey is the Tower Bank Arms, which also features in Beatrix Potter books.

Linking Ambleside to Ravenglass on the coast are two passes through the hills, one after the other along the road. These are called the Hardknott Pass and the Wrynose Pass an are not for the faint h
earted. The road is narrow, with steep gradients, adverse camber and hairpin bends! Apart from that it’s fine! We travelled over the Hardknott Pass and were so scared that we went around the bottom of the Wrynose Pass making us very late for evening meal in our guest house, much to the amusement of the owner! He reckoned that he and his mates go drinking in Ravenglass and come home over the two passes in the dark and a little tipsy!

The Kirkstone Pass is on the A592 travelling north from Ambleside and is quite beautiful. The gradients are not too steep, but it is the highest road in the Lake District reaching a height of 1,489 feet at the summit. The views up here are breathtaking.

Towards the north-east of the Lake District are two lakes, Crummock Water and Buttermere, which are end to end if you see what I mean. I had a book of walks that suggested that a walk all the way round Buttermere was enjoyable and not too taxing. It suggested parking the car at the pub at one end of the lake and walking round the lake to return to the car. We all thoroughly enjoyed the walk, maybe because I changed it slightly – we parked at the opposite end of the lake, walked to the pub, where we had lunch and a pint, and then walked round the other side of the lake back to the car! A much better idea don’t you think?

On the north-western side there is a waterfall called Aira Force, which is just off the A592 on the shores of Ullswater. There is a car park, which is owned by the National Trust so it’s pay and display, toilets and a visitor centre. You then have a short walk through trees to where Aira Beck rushes under a stone bridge and forms a waterfall 70 feet high. You can either climb right to the top where you can cross the beck via the stone bridge or you can be idle like we were and cross the beck after the waterfall via a wooden bridge. The view of the falls from the wooden bridge is spectacular.

There are plenty of ot
her villages and towns to visit, with Keswick being the major town of the Lake District. There are also many more waterfalls to visit and high passes to drive along, but I have concentrated here only on the places that I have actually visited.

The walking in the Lake District is varied from climbing Helvellyn at 3,116 feet, to a walk along the shores of the lakes. One of the walks we did was to catch a boat from one end of Ullswater to the other and then walk back to the car. It was a bit rocky in places but we all managed it OK. When we stopped for lunch the sheep all came and joined us to see if we would give them some food.

The Lake District has so much to see of such variety that I think almost everyone would be able to find something that they liked. I would certainly like to visit again, even if it’s only to see all the other waterfalls – I do love waterfalls! Which is just as well since the only downside to The Lake District is the amount of rain they get!

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