Staying in · Oxenholme
From the people who drive these roads every day
The station
West CoastMain Line
Kendal
3 milesdown the road
Nearest pickup
Oxenholmestation, on foot
Private tour
£459per group, collected
The Helm
<1 hourto the top
Small groups
7guests at most
A private tour from Oxenholme
Book any of our tours as a private tour, collected from your accommodation, for your party alone — or have a bespoke tour planned around your stay.
Book a private tour Plan a bespoke tourPrivate from £459 per group · small-group tours from £79 per person
Oxenholme is a small village three miles from Kendal with a main-line railway station, a country inn, a guest house and a ridge behind it. For most visitors it is a place to change trains. For anyone booking a tour with us it is something more useful than that: Oxenholme is one of our pickup points, and guests staying here can walk to their tour rather than drive to it.
Three of our tours pick up here, which makes Oxenholme unusually convenient for a place most people pass through. If you are coming from a distance, the arithmetic is really appealing: train from Euston to Oxenholme in under three hours, walk to your accommodation, and walk to your tour the following morning. No car, no transfers, no parking.
It is also worth saying plainly what Oxenholme is not. There is no lake, no high street and very little to do in the village itself beyond the inn, the walk up the Helm and the trains. What there is instead is easy arrival, lower prices than anywhere inside the national park, and Kendal three miles down the road.
Five minutes from the station
Pub, rooms, campsite
A traditional country inn in a former farmhouse below the Helm, with a bar, dining room and a small number of rooms. Dog-friendly in both bar and rooms, with a large beer garden and play area — really good for families — and a campsite alongside. It keeps four real ales and is a well-known stop for coast-to-coast cyclists.
Up the hill from the station
4-star, dog-friendly, parking
A four-star family-run B&B in a quiet spot close to the Helm, run by Bill and Pauline Connell. Freshly cooked breakfasts using local ingredients, off-road parking and cycle storage, and a welcome extended equally to tourists, walkers, cyclists, dogs and people breaking a long drive to Scotland. Around seven to ten minutes' walk from the station, and five from the pub.
The long ridge directly above the village is called the Helm, and it is one of the most under-walked viewpoints in southern Cumbria. It takes well under an hour from the village, involves no scrambling, and delivers a really wide view: the Lyth Valley and the Kent estuary to the south-west, Morecambe Bay beyond, and the whole southern skyline of the Lake District fells to the north. There is an Iron Age hillfort on top, though there is not a great deal of it left to see.
It is the sort of walk local people do after work and visitors never hear about. If you are staying a night before a tour, it is the perfect way to spend the evening.
The Auld Grey Town has the castle ruins on the hill above it, Abbot Hall, the Quaker Tapestry, the Brewery Arts Centre doing food and film and theatre in one building, and a really good independent high street. It is also where the supermarkets are. See our Kendal guide for the full picture.
Levens Hall has the oldest topiary garden in the world, laid out in the 1690s and clipped continuously since. Sizergh Castle is a medieval pele tower grown into a seven-hundred-year family house, with limestone gardens and good wildlife. Both are a short drive south, and both are places we run tours to.
Three of our full-day tours collect here: the 10 Lakes Tour, Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small. Your nearest small-group pickup is Oxenholme station itself, for some of our tours; private days collect you at the door. On private tours we can collect you at the door.
Any of these can run privately, collected from your accommodation, for your party alone. Our nearest small-group pickup is Oxenholme station itself, for some of our tours.
From Oxenholme a private day means we collect at the door and shape the route around your party — the lakes, the Yorkshire Dales or the great houses south, whichever suits. Well-behaved dogs are welcome aboard by prior arrangement, 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.
It is one of our pickup points. Our full-day tours — the 10 Lakes Tour, Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small — all collect at Oxenholme, and on the 10 Lakes Tour it is also the last drop-off on the way back. If you are staying in the village you can walk to your tour.
A main-line railway station, a country inn, a guest house, and the Helm — the ridge behind the village. It is a small place, and that is the point.
About three miles, or five to ten minutes by car. There are buses, and the branch line runs to Kendal and on to Windermere.
Very easily — Oxenholme is on the West Coast Main Line with direct services from London, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is one of the simplest arrivals in the Lake District.
The long ridge directly above the village — a short climb with views over the Lyth Valley, the Lakeland fells and out to Morecambe Bay. It takes under an hour and almost no visitors do it.
Any of our tours, run privately: your own guide and vehicle, collected from your accommodation, 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 accommodation 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.
