Randy Pike is a small, deliberately eccentric place — three suites and a separate pavilion in a former hunting lodge, hidden off the Hawkshead road a couple of miles from Ambleside, with breakfast brought to your room and a garden containing, for reasons that need not detain us, a police telephone box. It is also standing on land with a better claim to Beatrix Potter's story than almost anywhere else that says so. This guide explains why, and what to do from the door.
Quick Facts
A great many places in this corner of the Lakes describe themselves as being in Beatrix Potter country. This one has a documentary claim: the house began as a hunting lodge on the Wray Castle estate, and Wray Castle is where the sixteen-year-old Beatrix Potter came on a family summer holiday — her first stay in the Lake District, and by most accounts the thing that set the rest of her life in motion. She was not yet an author. She was a girl with a sketchbook and an interest in fungi. The estate you are staying on is where the Lakes first got hold of her.
This matters more than it sounds. Hill Top at Near Sawrey, the village school at Hawkshead, the Beatrix Potter Gallery and the lanes she drew are all a short drive south of you — no ferry queue, no crossing, no waiting. Guests staying over in Bowness do this as a day trip and lose an hour of it to the boat. You can be at Hill Top before they have boarded.
The lanes and paths from the house run down towards Wray Castle's grounds and the quiet western shore of Windermere, and south towards Sawrey and Hawkshead. This is the soft, wooded, tarn-scattered half of the national park rather than the dramatic half — Blelham Tarn, Claife Heights, oak woods and field paths. It is walking to think in rather than walking to conquer, and it is genuinely underrated.
The Drunken Duck and the Outgate Inn are both within easy reach and both worth the trip. The house's own arrangement — being driven over to the owners' restaurant in Grasmere and back again — is the other option, and the fact that somebody else is driving is rather the point of it.
The passes, the northern lakes and the Yorkshire days all sit beyond this quiet corner, and the roads out are narrow. Our tours carry seven guests at most; Ambleside library is your nearest pickup, a few minutes away.
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 & bookFor a stay this small and this deliberately unhurried, a private day suits it — collected at the house, no fixed departure, and a route shaped around your party. Dogs are welcome here and welcome with us, travelling safely in our vehicle crates.
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: the lane is genuinely easy to miss — the house has a reputation for being satisfyingly hard to find. Allow a few extra minutes the first time.
Car-free: harder here than in the towns; the B5286 has limited bus service. Most guests drive in, then leave the car for tour days.
Minimum stay: two nights, so plan the week accordingly.
Ages: our tours suit adults and older children, about seven and up.
About two and a half miles from Ambleside, off the B5286 towards Hawkshead — a former hunting lodge on the old Wray Castle estate, set well back from the road.
Ambleside library, a few minutes away — Windermere station and Bowness Pier 1 are the other two. On private tours we can usually collect you at the house.
Yes. Well-behaved dogs are also welcome on our private tours, travelling safely in the crates our vehicles carry, though not on scheduled departures.
Genuinely, yes — more so than most places that claim it. The house was a hunting lodge on the Wray Castle estate, and Wray Castle is where Beatrix Potter first stayed in the Lake District at the age of sixteen. Hill Top at Near Sawrey is a short drive south.
We are an independent local tour operator. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Randy Pike.