Cottages · Kendal, the Lyth Valley & Staveley
Staying in a Kendal or Lyth Valley Cottage —
A Local Guide
From the people who drive these roads every day
Cottages · Kendal, the Lyth Valley & Staveley
From the people who drive these roads every day
Kendal
Market townand our own base
Damsons
Late Marchblossom in the Lyth Valley
Nearest pickup
Oxenholmestation
Private tour
£459per group, collected
Kentmere
The valleythat goes nowhere
Small groups
7guests at most
A private tour from your cottage
In Kendal, a private tour collects you from the cottage door. Out in the Lyth Valley or at Staveley, a private full day collects you there, or a bespoke tour is planned around your stay.
Book a private tour Plan a bespoke tourPrivate from £459 per group · small-group tours from £79 per person
The country around Kendal holds a great deal of self-catering and almost none of the competition you get inside the national park: apartments in the town itself, stone cottages through the Lyth and Winster valleys, and a cluster around Staveley on the eastern edge of the Lakes. It is generally cheaper, easier to park at, and closer to the Yorkshire Dales than anywhere on a lake. This guide is for anyone with a key to one of them.
Kendal itself suits people who want to walk to a restaurant. Apartments in the centre put the river, the castle, the Brewery Arts Centre and a proper high street on foot, and Oxenholme is a short ride for tour days.
The Lyth and Winster valleys are the quiet option — narrow lanes, small farms, damson orchards and a handful of very good pubs, roughly midway between Kendal and Windermere. You will want a car, and you will not see many other visitors.
Staveley is the compromise, and a clever one: just inside the national park on the eastern edge, with a disproportionately good food scene for a village its size, the Kentmere Valley running north behind it, and the Windermere road minutes away.
The valley behind Staveley is a dead end — the road stops at the hamlet and the fells close in — and that single fact keeps it among the quietest valleys in the national park. The Kentmere Horseshoe is a serious high-ridge day for experienced walkers; for everyone else the valley road and the reservoir at the head make a lovely slow hour. There is no shop, no café and very little parking, which is part of the appeal and worth planning around.
If your cottage is anywhere in the Lyth or Winster valleys you are in damson country, and the timing matters. Late March into April the orchards blossom — a really spectacular few weeks that almost nobody outside Cumbria travels for. Come in September and the fruit is at farm gates and in every pub kitchen, turned into jam, chutney, pies and gin.
Supplies: Kendal has the big supermarkets and is far easier to park in than Windermere or Ambleside. Do the main shop on the way in, and top up at Staveley or the village shops after.
Eating out: better than you would expect. Kendal has proper independents; the Lyth Valley pubs punch well above their weight; Staveley has a bakery, a brewery taphouse and a chocolatier in a village of a few hundred people; and Cartmel, with its Michelin-starred kitchen, is under half an hour south.
Rain: the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal does food, film and theatre under one roof, and Abbot Hall and the Quaker Tapestry are both indoors and both good.
Dogs: a high proportion of cottages here take them — and well-behaved dogs are welcome on our private tours by prior arrangement.
Levens Hall holds the oldest topiary garden in the world, laid out in the 1690s and clipped ever since. Sizergh Castle is a medieval pele tower grown into a seven-hundred-year family house, with limestone gardens and good wildlife. Both are minutes from Kendal, both are places we run tours to, and both make an easy half-day when the fells are under cloud.
The lakes are twenty minutes and the Yorkshire Dales are closer still — but the driving and the parking are the least enjoyable part of either. Oxenholme station is a pickup on some of our tours; in Kendal, private days collect at your cottage, and further out a private full day or a bespoke day starts from where you are staying.
Any of these can run privately, collected from your cottage, for your party alone. Our nearest small-group pickup is Oxenholme station, for some of our tours.
For a cottage week with no fixed plans, a private day is the easy option — collected at the door, no departure time to drive to, and a route built around whether you want the lakes, the Dales or the houses south. Well-behaved dogs are welcome aboard by prior arrangement, travelling safely in our vehicle crates.
Not sure which route suits your plans, or want a day built entirely from scratch — a family reunion, a wedding anniversary, scattering ashes somewhere that mattered? Tell us what you have in mind and we'll design a day around it — see our guide to celebrating a special occasion for ideas, or get in touch directly.
Generally yes, and often noticeably so — you are outside the national park boundary, where prices drop and availability improves. For a week with a family, the difference can pay for several tour days.
Kendal for apartments and town convenience; the Lyth and Winster valleys for quiet cottages in damson country; Staveley if you want to be inside the national park with a good food scene and the Kentmere Valley behind you.
In Kendal, yes: a private tour collects you from the cottage and brings you back, from £459 for the group. Out in the Lyth Valley or at Staveley, a private tour runs as a full day, or we plan a bespoke tour around your stay. Oxenholme station is a pickup on some of our tours.
Kendal, comfortably — it has the largest supermarkets in the area and is far easier to park in than anywhere inside the park. Do it on the way in.
Yes — Staveley sits just inside the national park boundary on the eastern edge, which makes it a useful compromise: park prices without park parking problems.
Any of our tours, run privately: your own guide and vehicle, collected from your cottage, on the date that suits you, with nobody aboard you did not bring. We don’t run every tour every day, so reserve your day when you book your stay. Already here? Call us on 015394 55507.
Arriving by train? We can collect your party at the station, go straight out on tour, and bring you to your cottage at the end of the day.
With six or seven of you, a private tour costs less per person than the small-group tour.
Book a private tourTailor-made for each booking: an anniversary, a proposal, the places and the people you most want to see.
Plan a bespoke tourSources: Levens Hall; National Trust — Sizergh; Lake District National Park Authority.
Lake District Tours is an independent local tour company based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the places it mentions.
This page was checked by Gillian in .
Levens Hall topiary: Kevin Waterhouse, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Photographs are of the area rather than the hotel itself. Tour photographs are credited on each tour page.
