Lake Windermere

Alfred Wainwright’s first Lake District walk was up Orrest Head, in 1930, and the view of Windermere from the top changed the direction of his life

Wainwright had come from Blackburn for a holiday, climbed the modest hill above Windermere town, and looked north to see the full length of the lake with the Langdale Pikes behind it. He described the experience as a revelation. He subsequently spent 13 years walking and hand-writing his seven-volume guide to the Lakeland Fells, which remains in print and in use today. The view from Orrest Head – 20 minutes’ walk from Windermere railway station – is unchanged. It is still the best quick orientation to the Lake District’s geography and still worth the effort on any weather.

Windermere is England’s largest natural lake at 10.5 miles long and 219 feet at its deepest, and it sits in the Lake District National Park, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. It is also the most visited lake in England, and the gap between what the place offers and what most visitors actually experience is significant.

What Most Visitors Do (and the Problem With It)

Most visitors arrive at Bowness-on-Windermere on the eastern shore – the main tourist settlement, with lake cruise jetties, ice cream, boat hire, and the kind of holiday economy that operates at scale. On an August bank holiday, every car park fills and the promenade is packed. The Windermere Jetty Museum, opened in 2019 in a building designed to cantilever over the water’s edge, is genuinely excellent and genuinely undervisited relative to the crowds around it: a collection of original Victorian and Edwardian steam launches, some of the finest wooden boats in Britain, in a building that is itself one of the better pieces of modern architecture in the National Park. It is five minutes’ walk from the Bowness pier and most visitors walk past.

The Western Shore

The western shore sees a fraction of the eastern shore’s visitors and is noticeably less developed. Hawkshead, four miles west, is a medieval village where William Wordsworth attended the Grammar School from 1779 to 1787 – the building still exists and is run by the National Trust. The village is car-free in the centre. The Beatrix Potter Gallery in Hawkshead, in the former office building of her solicitor husband William Heelis, displays original illustrations from her books alongside biographical material; timed entry is required and numbers are capped.

Hill Top at Near Sawrey, two miles south of Hawkshead, is Beatrix Potter’s farmhouse. She stipulated in her bequest to the National Trust that the rooms be maintained exactly as she left them. They are. The garden is recognisable from the backgrounds of several of the Peter Rabbit illustrations. It is small and intimate and nothing like a managed heritage experience. Book timed entry in advance – it sells out.

On the Water

Windermere Lake Cruises runs scheduled services between Ambleside (north), Bowness (centre), and Lakeside (south). The Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway connects the southern pier to a steam railway running to Haverthwaite, which is the most distinctively Cumbrian transport combination available. Kayak and paddleboard hire is available at several points on the eastern shore. A 10mph speed limit applies to motorboats, making small craft practical throughout the lake.

Practical Notes

The A591 along the eastern shore is the worst road in the Lake District on summer weekends – 45 minutes for a five-mile journey between Bowness and Ambleside is normal. The train from Oxenholme (on the West Coast Main Line, two hours from London Euston) to Windermere town runs hourly and removes the parking problem entirely. Smaller guesthouses in Hawkshead and Ambleside are better positioned and significantly cheaper than the Bowness hotels for equivalent quality. The lake is swimmable from June through September – around 18 degrees Celsius at peak, clean by reasonable standards, and legally accessible under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.