Two Michelin Keys · Ambleside
Things to do near The Samling —
a local guide
A Georgian-Gothic house in sixty-seven acres above the lake.
Two Michelin Keys · Ambleside
A Georgian-Gothic house in sixty-seven acres above the lake.
Michelin
Two Keysand a Star
The estate
67 acresgardens, orchards, woods
Rooms
12house and cottages
Dove Cottage
15 minnorth, at Grasmere
Private tour
£459per group, from the hotel
Pickups
Amblesideand Windermere, a short drive
A private tour from The Samling
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
The turn comes without ceremony: a gate off the main road between Windermere and Ambleside, and a private drive that climbs so steeply and so decisively that the twenty-first century simply fails to follow you up it. Within a minute the road is somewhere below; by the top, the loudest thing is water moving through the gardens. Switch the engine off and sit for a moment before you go in — the quiet up here has a texture to it. This is The Samling — a twelve-room house rather than a hotel in the usual sense, an eighteenth-century Georgian-Gothic building in around sixty-seven acres of gardens, hay meadows, orchards and woodland, small enough to be booked entire and positioned almost exactly between the two towns. This guide covers the estate itself and the days beyond it.
The Samling holds two Michelin Keys, and its restaurant holds a Michelin Star. How to plan a day around a table here, and see the Michelin Collection for the full picture across the county. The house has a past worth an evening too — Wordsworth used to walk here to pay his rent, and we have written the full history of the house.
This is advice we give often, and guests here take it more readily than most: do not rush out. Take a coffee onto the terrace while the flagstones are still cold and the lake below is still deciding what colour to be, and make an inventory of what you can actually hear. Water, before anything — the springs rise on this hillside and are led under and around the house, chattering through the ornamental water gardens on their way down to the lake. Bees, if the day is warm, from the estate’s own hives. And underneath it all, the particular luxury of a road you know is down there and cannot hear.
Then walk it, slowly. The estate is a designed landscape — kitchen gardens that actually supply the kitchen, and if you brush a hand through the herb beds on your way past you will carry the scent for an hour; orchards; beehives; and those spring-fed water gardens linked by paths and small bridges, cool air lifting off the water at every crossing — and it takes an hour to cover properly. Give it the hour; it will reset the pace of your whole stay. There is a Georgian arbour looking down the lake with a story attached, which is where the history of the house comes in. Very few hotels in the Lakes have grounds that reward this much attention.
The position is the practical advantage. Ambleside is a few minutes north — coffee and bookshops and outdoor shops, the little cinema, the boats at Waterhead, and Stock Ghyll Force thundering away in the trees behind the town, close enough to walk to with a takeaway cup in hand. Windermere and Bowness are a few minutes south for the station, the swans and ice-cream bustle of the piers, and the livelier end of the lake. Guests here pick whichever suits the day and the weather, which is a luxury most single-village bases do not offer.
The history page tells it properly, but the short version is that the man who built this house owned Dove Cottage, and Wordsworth walked the five miles between the two to pay his rent. You can spend a very good morning driving his commute in reverse: through Ambleside while it is still waking up, along the shore of Rydal Water with the light coming low across the reeds, and up to Grasmere for Dove Cottage itself — low doorways, dark panelled rooms, a garden climbing the fell behind, and the strange, steadying sensation of standing in the small rooms where very large poetry was written. Entry is included as standard on our Wordsworth Morning Tour, from £79 per person from any of our three pickup points. As a private half-day from the hotel, from £459 for the group, the same tour runs for your party alone — with time in the village for St Oswald’s churchyard under its yews, and the gingerbread shop beside the gate, which you will smell before you see.
Beatrix Potter’s country sits directly across the lake — close enough to see from the terrace, far enough that the journey is part of the pleasure. The car ferry hauls itself over on its chains with gulls hanging alongside, and lands you in a softer, greener country of oak woods and small farms. At Near Sawrey, Hill Top — the farmhouse she bought with Peter Rabbit’s royalties and left with instructions that it be kept exactly as it was — still has her furniture and her china in their places, and a garden path crowded on both sides with flowers and vegetables fighting for the same ground. Then Hawkshead, all whitewashed lanes and low archways, for Tabitha Twitchit’s Bookshop. Our Beatrix Potter tours cover it as a small group — the afternoon version makes the crossing by boat instead, fells sliding past at water level, £99 per person — and the morning tour takes in Tarn Hows as well.
Every so often there is a helicopter parked on the lawn here — sixty-seven private acres will do that. It is not a novelty, either: the hotel provides helicopter landing in the grounds by arrangement, and if you are coming to the Lakes by air this is, rather obviously, the hotel to aim for. You land where you will be sleeping, and the motorway happens to other people.
It also sets up the best arrival day we know how to build. Land mid-morning — the grass flattening away from you, the rotors winding down into birdsong — and let your bags go up to the room while we meet you at the hotel. Then the day begins: the passes, the valleys, the literary villages, with nobody in your party behind a wheel. We have you back on the hillside with time to change and a drink on the terrace while the lake below turns to pewter, then dinner in the Michelin-starred restaurant downstairs — and after it, one of the quietest nights in the district: windows open, nothing out there but owls and moving water. A private tour from the hotel starts at £459 for the group; a fully bespoke day is designed from scratch around your landing time. Tell us when you touch down and we will build the rest.
The house looks south down the length of Windermere and west towards the Coniston fells, and for the first day that is simply a view. By the second morning it has usually become an agenda: what is at the far end of the lake, and what is behind that ridge the sunset keeps catching? The honest answer is the best of the district — the passes, the western valleys, the literary villages — all of it beyond a comfortable drive from this shore, and the driving is the part nobody enjoys. Lake District Tours runs small-group days with seven guests at most from Windermere station, Bowness Pier 1 and Ambleside library, all within about ten minutes of The Samling; private tours collect at the house.
Worth knowing before you choose: any of these tours can also run privately, collected from the hotel — the same tour, for your party alone. Just say so when you enquire.
Our small-group tours carry seven guests at most. Any of them can also run privately, collected from the hotel, for your party alone.
The orchards are the reason to time a stay for this season if you can. Walk out among them in October and the air is thick and sweet with windfall apples, wasps humming lazily around the last of the fruit, branches bowed low enough to pick from without reaching. The kitchen gardens shift onto their final harvest — the earthy scent of just-lifted roots, the sharp green smell of the last herbs before frost takes them — and what comes off the ground that morning is very often what lands on your plate that evening, still faintly warm from the sun.
The spring-fed water gardens take on a completely different character too: mist pooling on the water some mornings, hanging low and silver between the trees, the surrounding canopy doubled in perfect, burnished reflection once the leaves turn. Walk the paths early enough and you'll have it entirely to yourself, just the sound of water moving between the little bridges. And the hillside position, which in summer means simply a good view, becomes something far better now — stand at the top and watch the colour spill down through the valley below in real time, Windermere catching the low autumn light long after the shore itself has slipped into shadow. It is a view worth crossing the country for.
For what's open, what's turning and the tours that suit the season, see our guide to the Lake District in autumn.
For a house taken as a whole, or a celebration stay, a private tour is the natural companion — collected from the hotel, for your party alone. Well-behaved dogs travel safely in the crates our vehicles carry.
From the Samling the good roads are the high ones. Kirkstone rises behind the house to the highest pass in the Lakes, and Troutbeck lies over the shoulder. Our private tours are made for this country: a pass in poor weather, the walled lanes beyond it, and a full day taken in comfort. Your guide drives.
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.
Without a car: workable with taxis — the station is close, and tour days cover the distances.
Timing: for a whole-house booking, tell us the group size and interests early and we will shape the touring around it.
Ages: our tours suit adults and older children, about seven and up.
On the hillside above the eastern shore of Windermere, between Ambleside and Windermere, set in around 67 acres of gardens, hay meadows and woodland.
Ambleside library and Windermere station are both a short drive; Bowness Pier 1 is the third. On private tours we can usually collect you at the house.
Yes — with twelve rooms across the main house and its cottages, The Samling is small enough to be taken in its entirety, which is a popular arrangement for family gatherings and celebrations.
The estate runs to kitchen gardens, orchards, beehives and spring-fed water gardens linked by paths and bridges — genuinely worth an hour before you go anywhere else.
Easily — Dove Cottage is about fifteen minutes up the road at Grasmere, and entry is included as standard on our Wordsworth Morning Tour. There is a family connection too: the man who built The Samling owned Dove Cottage, and Wordsworth walked here to pay his rent.
About forty minutes, crossing Windermere by the car ferry to Near Sawrey. Our Beatrix Potter tours cover it as a small group of seven at most, and a private tour can collect you at the house.
Yes — the hotel provides helicopter landing in the grounds by prior arrangement. Tell us your landing time and we can have a private or bespoke tour day waiting at the hotel, with you back in time for dinner in the Michelin-starred restaurant.
Any of our tours, run privately: your own guide and minibus, collected from the hotel, on the date that suits you, with nobody in the minibus you didn't bring.
With six or seven of you, a private tour costs less per person than the scheduled tour.
Book a private tourTailor-made for each individual booking — the places and the people you most want to see.
Plan a bespoke tourLake District Tours is an independent local tour company based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Samling.
This page was checked by Phil in .
