Kendal · the eastern edge
Things to do near Castle Green Hotel —
a local guide
From the people who drive these roads every day
Kendal · the eastern edge
From the people who drive these roads every day
Kendal
1.5 milesto the centre
Windermere
20–25 minby road
Nearest pickup
Oxenholmestation, minutes away
Private tour
£459per group, from the hotel
The M6
Minutesthe easiest arrival
Small groups
7guests at most
A private tour from Castle Green
Book any of our tours as a private tour, collected from the hotel, 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
Castle Green sits in landscaped grounds on the eastern side of Kendal, a Victorian mansion extended into a proper hotel, with the M6 a few minutes one way and the Lake District twenty minutes the other. It is the most practical base in this guide and makes no apology for it: easy to reach, easy to park at, and a great deal cheaper than the equivalent beside a lake. This guide covers what that buys you.
It is worth being clear about the trade-off, because it is a real one. You will not wake up looking at a lake. What you get instead is a room that costs less, a car park you can actually use, a motorway junction minutes away, and a main-line station on the doorstep — and the lakes themselves twenty minutes up the road. For a family, a longer stay, or anyone who has ever spent forty minutes looking for a space in Bowness, that is a straightforwardly better holiday.
The walk into town takes you down towards the River Kent and into the Auld Grey Town proper: the yards running off the main streets, Abbot Hall, the Brewery Arts Centre, and a really good independent high street. Kendal Castle stands on the hill — twelfth-century, ruined, free, always open, and giving the best view of the whole town. Katherine Parr's family held it, though the popular claim that she was born there is a good deal shakier than the postcards suggest.
West of Kendal the ground rises to Scout Scar, a limestone escarpment with a shelter on top known locally as the Mushroom. It is a short, easy walk from the road with an enormous view west over the Lyth Valley to the Coniston fells — and because it is not in the national park proper, hardly anyone from outside the area knows about it. Half an hour of your first afternoon, very well spent.
Levens Hall has the oldest topiary garden in the world, laid out in the 1690s and continuously clipped ever since — a living object more than three centuries old. Sizergh Castle is a medieval pele tower grown into a family house, held by the Stricklands for around seven hundred years, with limestone gardens and good wildlife. Both are a few minutes down the A591, and we run tours to both.
Oxenholme is minutes away and is a pickup on some of our tours, which makes a Kendal base unusually easy to build a week around. Private days collect at the hotel.
Any of these can run privately, collected from the hotel, for your party alone. Oxenholme station is the nearest small-group pickup.
From a Kendal base a private day works especially well — collected at the hotel, no drive to a departure point, and the route built around whether you want the lakes, the Dales or the great houses just down the road. 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.
Arriving: M6 junction 36 or 37, or the main line to Oxenholme. About as easy as Lakeland arrivals get.
Parking: on site, and free — worth more than it sounds if you have ever parked in Bowness in August.
Into town: walk down, taxi back; the return leg is uphill.
Ages: our tours suit adults and older children, about seven and up.
On the eastern edge of Kendal in landscaped grounds, about a mile and a half from the town centre and a few minutes from the M6.
On private tours, yes: we collect you at the hotel and bring you back, from £459 for the group. For a small-group seat, our nearest pickup is Oxenholme station, a few minutes away, for some of our tours; each tour page lists the pickups that tour uses.
About twenty to twenty-five minutes by road — one of the practical advantages of a Kendal base is that you are close without paying lakeside prices.
Yes, in about twenty-five to thirty minutes, largely downhill on the way in. Most guests walk one way and taxi the other.
Any of our tours, run privately: your own guide and vehicle, collected from the hotel, 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 the hotel 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: Castle Green Hotel, Kendal; Levens Hall; National Trust — Sizergh.
Lake District Tours is an independent local tour company based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Castle Green Hotel in Kendal.
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.
