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.
Quick Facts
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 genuinely 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 point on our full-day tours, which makes a Kendal base unusually easy to build a week around. Private days collect at the hotel.
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 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, 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.
Oxenholme, a few minutes away, 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. Half-day tours run from Windermere station, Bowness Pier 1 and Ambleside library. On private tours we can usually collect you at the hotel.
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.
We are an independent local tour operator, based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Castle Green Hotel.