Kendal is the town most visitors drive through on the way to somewhere prettier, which is their loss and, if you have booked here, your gain. It is the gateway to the Lake District rather than part of it: cheaper, quieter, easier to park in, on the West Coast Main Line, and within half an hour of both the lakes and the Yorkshire Dales. It is also where we are based. This guide is written by people who live and work here.
Quick Facts
Kendal is built from local limestone, which gives it the grey, sober look that earned the nickname — and which is rather handsome in the right light. It made its money from wool: "Kendal Green" cloth was well enough known that Shakespeare put it in Henry IV. The town's yards, the narrow passages running off the main streets, are a survival of that period and worth ten minutes' wandering. The castle ruins on the hill above are free, open and give the best view of the whole town; Katherine Parr's family held it, though the story that she was born there is a good deal shakier than the guidebooks suggest.
This is Kendal's strongest card and most visitors miss it entirely. Levens Hall, a few miles south, has the oldest topiary garden in the world — laid out in the 1690s and continuously maintained ever since, which makes it a living object roughly three hundred and thirty years old. Sizergh Castle, closer still, is a medieval pele tower grown into a family house, held by the Strickland family for some seven hundred years, with limestone gardens and genuinely good wildlife. We run tours to both.
Oxenholme sits on the edge of Kendal on the West Coast Main Line, which means direct trains from London, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh — you can be here from Euston in under three hours. It is also a pickup point on our full-day tours: the Ultimate, Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small all collect at Oxenholme. If you are staying in Kendal, that is a genuine convenience, and it is worth planning the week around which days those tours run.
From Kendal the Yorkshire Dales are nearer than the western Lakes — the road east through the Lune Valley gets you into limestone country quickly. That is why our Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small days pick up here: you are pointed the right way to start with. If you have any interest in the Dales at all, a Kendal base makes them easy rather than an expedition.
Kendal has a better independent food scene than its reputation suggests — proper bakeries, a decent market, and the Brewery Arts Centre doing food, film and theatre in one place. And yes, Kendal Mint Cake is real, still made here, and was carried up Everest in 1953. It is not confectionery so much as portable glucose, and it tastes exactly like that, which is the point.
The lakes themselves are twenty-odd minutes away, and the driving and parking are the least pleasant part of visiting them in season. Our small-group tours carry seven guests at most; full-day tours collect at Oxenholme, and private days can usually collect at your accommodation.
The grand sweep: ten lakes, the high passes between them, and an Ullswater Steamers cruise exclusive to this tour. If a celebration stay deserves one great day out, this is it.
See dates & bookCollected at the door, your party only, the day shaped to you — literary landscapes, hidden valleys, or simply the most beautiful roads we know. Well-behaved dogs are welcome aboard in our vehicle crates.
Enquire about a private dayDove Cottage at Grasmere — entry included as standard — and the valleys that made the poems, with Dora's Field carpeted gold in daffodil season. The right literary day for this most Georgian of addresses.
See dates & bookAcross the lake to Hill Top and Near Sawrey, with our illustration-matching walk through the village lanes — back for a long lakeside lunch.
See dates & bookThe afternoon version crosses the lake by boat rather than by road — worth choosing if you'd like the crossing itself to be part of the day.
See dates & bookA slow hall morning, then eight lakes and their valleys at a seven-seat pace — the most civilised way to spend a Lakeland afternoon.
See dates & bookThe same eight lakes as the afternoon tour, run the opposite way round in the morning — ideal if you'd rather keep your afternoon free for the lawns.
See dates & bookA full literary day east to Haworth — the Parsonage, the cobbled village, and the moors that gave Wuthering Heights its weather, newly magnetic with the recent film. Oxenholme pickup available.
See dates & bookInto the Dales for Grassington's "Darrowby", the Wensleydale Creamery, Kilnsey Crag and Bolton Abbey — filming locations brought to life around you with live scene technology.
See dates & bookFrom a Kendal base a private day works particularly well — collected at your accommodation, no drive to a departure point, and the route shaped around whether you want the lakes, the Dales or the great houses on the doorstep. Well-behaved dogs are welcome aboard, travelling safely in the crates our vehicles carry.
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.
Getting here: Oxenholme on the main line, then a short taxi or the branch train. From the M6, junction 36 or 37.
Parking: considerably easier and cheaper than anywhere in the national park — one of the real advantages of this base.
Value: accommodation here generally costs less than the equivalent beside a lake, which for a longer stay adds up to a fair number of extra tour days.
Ages: our tours suit adults and older children, about seven and up.
Just outside it. Kendal sits a few miles south-east of the national park boundary — which is why it is cheaper, quieter and easier to reach than lakeside towns, and why a great many visitors base themselves here on purpose.
Oxenholme, on the edge of Kendal, is a pickup point on our full-day tours — the Ultimate (The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour), Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small. For half-day tours our pickups are Windermere station, Bowness Pier 1 and Ambleside library. On private tours we can usually collect you at your accommodation.
About twenty to twenty-five minutes by road, or a short train hop from Oxenholme to Windermere on the branch line.
The castle ruins above the town, Abbot Hall, the Brewery Arts Centre, the Kendal Museum and a genuinely good independent high street — plus Levens Hall and Sizergh Castle a short drive south.
For a certain kind of trip, very much so — better value, easier parking, direct rail access, and both the Lakes and the Yorkshire Dales within reach. The trade-off is that you are not waking up beside a lake.
We are an independent local tour operator, based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by any hotel or guesthouse in the town.