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.
Quick Facts
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 genuinely 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
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 — genuinely 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
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 genuinely 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 genuinely 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 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 — twenty to twenty-five minutes away. On private tours we can collect you at the door.
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 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, 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 Ultimate (The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour), Brontë Country and All Creatures Great and Small — all collect at Oxenholme, and on the Ultimate 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.
We are an independent local tour operator, based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Station Inn or the Glen Guest House.