Place-based, seasonal and wildlife writing — the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales through the year.
142 articles
The Channel 5 adaptation of James Herriot's veterinary memoirs, which began in 2020 and has since been watched by millions of people in Britain and interna…
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Most of the people who photograph it do not know what it is called. A surprisingly large proportion do not know why it looks the way it does, or why the vi…
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August in the Lake District is busy, loud and full of possibilities. Here is how to make it work for families with children of different ages.…
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The Lake District in autumn is the version of the Lakes that most surprises people who visit for the first time in summer. The fells in July and August are…
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The River Ure drops over a series of broad limestone steps at Aysgarth in Wensleydale, creating three tiers of waterfalls — Upper, Middle and Lower — withi…
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When people think of Beatrix Potter's significance, they think of the books. The Peter Rabbit books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. They have …
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The illustrations in the Beatrix Potter books are not imagined. They are drawn from specific places, in specific seasons, at specific times of day. This is…
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At dawn on a spring morning on the moorland edge above the Yorkshire Dales, groups of male black grouse gather on a lek — a traditional display ground that…
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Blencathra does this. It is one of those mountains that commands attention before you know what it is, before you know its height or its name or anything a…
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The English bluebell is one of the most remarkable wildflowers in Europe. The Lake District holds a disproportionate share of the world's remaining bluebel…
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Bolton Abbey is one of those places where the setting does as much work as the architecture. The ruins of the Augustinian priory — founded 1155, dissolved …
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Borrowdale is narrow. The B5289 road that runs through it is single-track in places and subject to passing places, which both constrains the volume of traf…
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On a calm day with good light, Buttermere is the most photographed lake in the National Park — not because it is the most famous, but because the condition…
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The Buttertubs Pass connects Wensleydale and Swaledale across the moorland ridge that separates the two valleys. The road climbs from Hawes in the south, c…
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Castlerigg Stone Circle was already ancient when the Norse settlers arrived and named the surrounding fells. It was ancient when the Romans built their roa…
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Most visitors to the Lake District go to Castlerigg and think they know what they are looking at. A stone circle. Impressive. Photogenic. Ancient.…
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It is, mile for mile and minute for minute, among the finest walks in the Lake District.…
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Coniston Water is five miles long, sits in a quiet valley on the western edge of the Lake District, and manages to be simultaneously one of the most beauti…
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The curlew's call is one of the defining sounds of the British upland — a long, bubbling, ascending cry that carries across the open moorland for half a mi…
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If someone in your life loves the Lake District — or loves Beatrix Potter, or Wordsworth, or the Brontës, or simply the idea of a proper day out in the Eng…
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This is not an idiosyncratic view. The painters who came here — Turner, Constable, Cotman, de Wint — came mostly in autumn and early winter. The particular…
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Derwentwater has four main islands: St Herbert's, Derwent Island, Lord's Island and Rampsholme. Each is visible from the shore, each is mostly inaccessible…
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The underlying rock is Borrowdale Volcanic — the dark, ancient igneous rock of the central Lake District, which weathers to the grey-green characteristic o…
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He planted them for his daughter Dorothy, known as Dora, who was ill and whom he feared he might lose. He did not lose her yet — she survived until 1847, o…
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There is a moment when you step into Dove Cottage that surprises almost everyone. The house is smaller than you expected. The rooms are lower-ceilinged, da…
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The drystone walls of the Yorkshire Dales are so ubiquitous, so completely part of the landscape, that they become invisible to the casual observer. From a…
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Esthwaite Water lies in the valley between Hawkshead and Near Sawrey, at an altitude of about 65 metres. It is shallow (maximum depth approximately 15 metr…
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Ruskin wrote that three scenes had made the deepest impression on him in childhood: the coast near Genoa, the valley of Chamoix, and the view from Friar's …
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One mile east of Malham, through a gap in the dry stone walls and along a limestone valley that narrows progressively as you walk, Gordale Scar announces i…
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Next to St Oswald's Church in Grasmere village, in a tiny 17th century cottage that was once the village school, there is a gingerbread shop that has been …
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It is, however, probably the most written-about lake in England. This changes what it is.…
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Grasmere is a small village in the central Lake District, enclosed by fells on three sides with the lake below. It has a church, a river, a village green a…
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It is worth understanding why, because understanding why the village works as Darrowby tells you something about both the series and the place.…
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Grassington sits above the River Wharfe in Upper Wharfedale at a height of two hundred metres, and it has the quality that the best Dales villages share: i…
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Great Gable is not the highest mountain in the Lake District — that is Scafell Pike, 978 metres, two miles to the south-east. It is not the most dramatic i…
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Hardraw Force, in the village of Hardraw in upper Wensleydale, is England's highest single-drop waterfall above ground, falling 30 metres from the limeston…
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Hawes sits at the head of Wensleydale at approximately 260 metres above sea level — high enough that it gets more snow than the lower dale and enough wind …
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In late May and June, the unimproved hay meadows of the Yorkshire Dales are among the most botanically rich habitats in England — remnants of a landscape t…
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In the original Herriot books, Helen is a warm and largely idealised figure — the farmer's daughter who becomes James's wife and companion. Herriot writes …
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Helvellyn is 950 metres above sea level and the third highest mountain in England after Scafell Pike and Scafell. It is also the most walked mountain in th…
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Beatrix Potter understood this. She spent the last thirty-five years of her life breeding Herdwicks, became one of the leading experts on the breed and lef…
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Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in 1905 for £2,805 — the proceeds of the first three Peter Rabbit books. She was thirty-nine. She had ne…
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At the summit of Honister Pass, at 1,167 feet above sea level in the heart of the western Lake District, there is a working slate mine. Not a heritage attr…
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The fictional Darrowby of the books is based primarily on Thirsk, with elements from other North Yorkshire market towns. The veterinary practice at 23 Kirk…
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James Herriot was not, in one sense, a writer. He was a veterinary surgeon who had a gift for storytelling and a wife who told him he should write it all d…
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There is a week in early June — before the schools break, after the last of the spring rain — when the Lake District is at its most quietly spectacular. Th…
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The view from the summit, looking north over the Kirkstone valley towards Ullswater, is one of the defining views of the Lake District National Park. It is…
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The red deer is Britain's largest land animal. A mature stag in full antler stands over a metre at the shoulder and can weigh over 200 kilograms. In the La…
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The Lake District has a substantial body of folklore — stories, legends and traditions attached to specific places in the landscape that have been told and…
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June is the month of maximum light in the Lake District. The days are at their longest — seventeen and a half hours from first light to last on the solstic…
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Turner came to the Lake District seven times. Constable came. John Sell Cotman came. The topographical watercolourists of the late 18th century came in suc…
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This guide addresses both. It covers the classic locations and why they work, the less obvious alternatives, and the single most important factor in Lake D…
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The question visitors ask most often — after how to get here and where to stay — is which season to come. The answer is that each season has specific quali…
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The summer solstice falls on or around 21 June each year — the moment when the sun reaches its northernmost point in the sky and the days, which have been …
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The alarm goes at 3.50am. This seems extreme when you set it at 11pm the night before and considerably more extreme when it sounds. The justification is th…
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The Lake District has more waterfalls per square mile than almost any other area of England. This is a direct consequence of the geology — the hard, resist…
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The conventional wisdom about winter wildlife in the Lake District is that there isn't much of it — that the birds and animals have moved south, the fells …
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The lapwing's display flight is one of the most theatrical things British wildlife offers. The bird — iridescent green above, white below, with a long wisp…
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The Yorkshire Dales look ancient and unchanging. The dry stone walls, the field barns, the villages gathered in their valley shelter — it is easy to assume…
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Levens Hall is five miles south of Kendal, in the same limestone country as Sizergh and similarly at the gateway to the Lake District from the south. The h…
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Limestone pavements look as though they were made. The regular pattern of flat slabs divided by deep fissures, the geometric quality of the surface, the se…
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There are a few places in England where the landscape produces genuine surprise — where you know intellectually what you are about to see but the reality, …
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This is partly because Moss Force sits on a minor road that most Lake District visitors never take, and partly because the Lake District has so many waterf…
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Mrs Tiggy-Winkle is the best-loved of Beatrix Potter's characters among many adults who have grown up with the books and returned to them as parents or gra…
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Near Sawrey is a small village on the western side of Esthwaite Water, in the southern Lake District between Hawkshead and the Windermere ferry at Far Sawr…
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Quietness in the Lake District is relative. In August, even Newlands is not solitary. But compared to Borrowdale to the east or the Windermere corridor to …
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You do not need a car to have an extraordinary time in the Lake District. In fact, on a busy summer weekend, leaving the car at home is one of the best dec…
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The received wisdom about visiting the Lake District in winter is that it is to be avoided. The days are short, the weather is unpredictable, many business…
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October is when the Lake District rewards the visitors who planned ahead. The summer crowds have gone. The school holidays are over. And the landscape is d…
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In 2001, ospreys bred successfully at Bassenthwaite Lake in the Lake District — the first confirmed osprey breeding in England for one hundred and fifty ye…
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The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth. In a stoop — a dive from height onto prey below — a peregrine can reach 240 miles per hour. At these s…
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Peter Rabbit is one of the most recognisable fictional characters in the world. The blue jacket, the white whiskers, the tension between the garden and the…
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The Lake District is exceptional raptor country. The combination of open fell, ancient woodland, river valleys and a relatively intact prey base supports a…
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The red squirrel is one of Britain's most threatened native mammals and one of the most reliably spotted in the Lake District. While the species has been l…
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The Ribblehead Viaduct stands at the head of Ribblesdale where the moorland opens wide and the sky is large. Twenty-four arches carry the Settle–Carlisle r…
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The roe deer is one of the most beautiful mammals in Britain and one of the most commonly seen on our morning tours — yet most visitors to the Lake Distric…
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The Romans were in the Lake District for approximately three hundred and fifty years — from the Flavian conquest of northern Britain in the 70s CE to the w…
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There is a place in the grounds of Rydal Hall that almost no visitor to the Lake District ever finds. It is not signposted on the main road. It does not ap…
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Rydal Mount is a larger, more comfortable house than Dove Cottage, and that has occasionally been held against it. The argument runs that Wordsworth's best…
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If you ask the people who live and work in the Lake District which month they would choose to visit, a significant proportion will say September. Not Augus…
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It is also, on its own terms, one of the finest small market towns in the north of England. The Shambles — a two-storey arcade of former market stalls on t…
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Sizergh Castle is not, technically, in the Lake District National Park. It sits on the edge of the Lyth Valley, four miles south of Kendal, in the limeston…
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Skipton stands at the point where the Yorkshire Dales begin and the West Yorkshire urban fringe ends. It is a market town of approximately 15,000 people, w…
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Most viewpoints in the Lake District require effort to reach — a climb, a walk, a scramble. Surprise View requires none of these. It is on a road, accessib…
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It leaves again in late July or early August — earlier than the swallow and house martin, which linger into September. The swift's presence in the Lake Dis…
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Tabitha Twitchit's Bookshop in Hawkshead occupies the former office of William Heelis, the solicitor who managed Beatrix Potter's Lake District farm purcha…
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Tarn Hows is not a natural lake. The tarn — a shallow upland pool surrounded by mixed woodland and rough pasture, three miles north of Hawkshead — was crea…
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Tarn Hows is one of the most visited spots in the entire Lake District. On a fine summer weekend it is also one of the most congested. Cars queue to enter …
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Thirlmere is three and a half miles long, sits in a steep-sided valley between the Helvellyn ridge and the High Seat fells, and appears on the A591 — the m…
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There is, statistically speaking, a good chance that Tricki Woo is the reason you are considering booking the All Creatures tour.…
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The most famous daffodils in English literature grew beside Ullswater. That much is certain. What is less often told is that William Wordsworth did not wri…
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It is twelve miles long, the second largest lake in the Lake District after Windermere, and it bends twice as it runs from Pooley Bridge in the north to Pa…
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The Lake District looks English. The farms, the dry stone walls, the small market towns — it looks like the English countryside that it is. But the languag…
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The valley is different in character from the popular Lakes precisely because it is harder to get to. There is one road in and one road out. The car park i…
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Wensleydale cheese has been made in the Yorkshire Dales for at least nine hundred years. The original recipe was brought to the valley by Cistercian monks …
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William Heelis was a solicitor in Hawkshead. He handled the conveyancing for Beatrix Potter's first farm purchase in 1905 and continued to manage her incre…
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Windermere is eleven miles long, one mile wide at its broadest, and the largest natural lake in England. It is also the most visited, the most commercially…
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William Wordsworth walked an estimated 180,000 miles in his lifetime. The figure was calculated by Thomas De Quincey, who knew Wordsworth well, based on hi…
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Wray Castle is where Beatrix Potter first came to the Lake District, where she first encountered the landscape that would shape her work, and where she met…
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The novel is not set in the Yorkshire Dales. It is set on the moors above Haworth. But the intensity of her feeling for the specific quality of that landsc…
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In 2006, a film called Miss Potter was released starring Renée Zellweger as Beatrix Potter and Ewan McGregor as Norman Warne. It was a modest commercial su…
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No flights, no transfers, no currency, no luggage carousel: why a Lake District staycation delivers a bigger holiday feeling than the departure lounge — and how
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Narrow passes, full car parks and views that happen while you're watching the road: why the person driving sees the least of the Lake District — and what c
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The Ullswater Steamers have worked the lake since 1859. Here's what an hour aboard is actually like — the fells, the daffodil shore, the history — and how
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912 square miles, sixteen lakes, England's highest mountains, UNESCO World Heritage status and two centuries of literary pilgrimage — the honest case for w
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Seventeen million visits a year — and most of them in the same six villages at the same four hours. The timing tactics that let you have the famous Lake Distric
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The Yorkshire Dales is an International Dark Sky Reserve — the largest in the UK. What a sky-minded bespoke tour looks like, why winter is its season, and how a
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How to give a private Lake District tour as a gift — vouchers for any amount, delivered in minutes, valid 12 months. The present for people who have enough thin
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Empty roads, snow on the fells and light that photographers cross continents for. Why a private Lake District tour between November and March is the connoisseur
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Foulshaw Moss near Witherslack is Cumbria Wildlife Trust's restored raised bog — nesting ospreys, sundews, adders and dragonflies, twenty minutes from Kendal.
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Smardale Gill National Nature Reserve near Kirkby Stephen: a Victorian viaduct walk, red squirrels, and the Scotch argus butterfly — found at only two English s
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Snaizeholme, near Hawes, is the Yorkshire Dales' red squirrel stronghold — a dedicated trail, a valley-scale new woodland, and the Dales' best chance of a sight
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Holker Hall has passed by inheritance from the Prestons to the Lowthers to the Cavendishes since the 16th century, surviving a catastrophic 1871 fire along the
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Dalemain's garden holds a silver fir gifted by the botanist Sir Joseph Banks and a named cultivar of Himalayan blue poppy — a plant collection with real scienti
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Dalemain's gardening year runs from the first snowdrops through the World's Original Marmalade Awards in April to a summer of roses and events.
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Only two families have owned Hutton in the Forest in seven centuries — and the second, the Fletcher-Vanes, changed its name four times along the way.
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Dalemain's award-winning plantsman's garden holds over 200 roses, Himalayan blue poppies, a heritage apple timeline and a box topiary dragon.
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Holker Hall's gardens have been reshaped by three families and two centuries of designers, from an Edwardian Mawson redesign to a 21st-century cascade.
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Hutton in the Forest's Walled Garden, Cascade and Middle Pond were laid out across the 18th century and are still being reworked by the family today.
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Leighton Hall's twenty-six recorded owners were almost all Catholic gentry, and the estate is now the ancestral home of the Gillow furniture-making dynasty.
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Dalemain has belonged to the Hasell family since 1679, when Sir Edward Hasell — steward to Lady Anne Clifford — bought an estate already centuries old.
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Holker Hall's garden holds a 400-year-old lime tree with one of the largest girths in Britain, and a cascade said to have been inspired by a visit to Rajasthan.
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Holker Hall's gardens benefit from Morecambe Bay's moderating effect on the Cartmel Peninsula, allowing rare plants to thrive that struggle in the central fells
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Hutton in the Forest's 17th-century dovecote still holds its original rotating ladder, and its Walled Garden began life training fruit trees rather than flowers
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Hutton in the Forest's grounds and woodland walk are typically open daily except Saturdays through the main season — here's how the garden changes month to mont
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Leighton Hall's daily flying displays pair one of England's oldest field sports with a view straight into the Lake District — and next door, the reedbeds of Lei
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Leighton Hall's walled garden sits just outside Carnforth, with the Lakeland fells filling the view north — a working garden with three centuries behind its wal
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Leighton Hall keeps a short public season, May to September, shaped by the mild air off Morecambe Bay — here's what each month actually offers.
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Sizergh Castle's garden is open most days March to November — here's how the rock garden, fern collection and lake section change through the year.
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Sizergh Castle sits in the limestone country between the southern Lakes and the Kent estuary — geology that shaped both the wider landscape and the castle's own
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Sizergh Castle's rock garden and its national fern collection were built in the 20th century from naturally wet ground at the foot of a 14th-century peel tower.
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The Stricklands of Sizergh backed the losing side in three successive upheavals — the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the 1715 rising — and kept the cast
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Dalemain sits five miles southwest of Penrith on the road to Ullswater — here's how to get there and what to combine it with.
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Holker Hall sits on the Cartmel Peninsula at the southern edge of the Lake District — here's how to plan a visit, and what pairs well with it.
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Hutton in the Forest sits near Skelton, close to Penrith — often the quietest and least crowded of Cumbria's great gardens.
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Leighton Hall sits just outside the Lake District boundary near Carnforth — here's how to get there, what to expect, and how it fits a Lakeland visit.
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Sizergh Castle is three and a half miles south of Kendal, easily reached from Windermere or Oxenholme — here's how to plan a visit.
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Guillaume Beaumont designed Levens Hall's topiary garden and lived there until his death in 1727 — and Levens Hall is still trying to trace where he came from.
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James Grahme lost his position at court in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and bought Levens Hall the same year — then spent the rest of his life building its g
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Levens Hall's topiary is reclipped every autumn and shows its crispest lines in spring — here's how the garden changes across the visiting year.
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Levens Hall's topiary is reclipped every year from September to Christmas — a look at the craft, the Beech Circle, and the country's oldest recorded ha-ha.
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Levens Hall sits five miles south of Kendal in the Kent valley — here's how to get there and what to expect from a visit.
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Our Beatrix Potter afternoon tour visits Wray Castle, Hill Top and Hawkshead — then ends with a genuine Windermere Lake Cruises boat back to Bowness. Here's why
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Everyone calls Ambleside the crossroads of the Lake District. Almost nobody mentions the Roman fort at Waterhead that proves people have been using it as exactl
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The Lake District's UNESCO World Heritage status explicitly names the Herdwick sheep as part of its justification. Here's the fact-checked story, including a co
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Hill Top's 1905 purchase is usually told as a shopping trip funded by Peter Rabbit royalties. The real story is about grief, independence, and a working farm th
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It isn't heritage management keeping the Lake District's fells looking the way they do. It's Herdwick sheep, hefted to the ground across generations.
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Hill Top's story is usually told through Beatrix Potter alone. Here's the tenant farmers, the unnamed domestic labour, and the working farm that's outlasted all
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Beatrix Potter told her own publisher where Mr McGregor's garden came from — and it wasn't Hill Top. Discover Lingholm, on the quiet shore of Derwent Wate
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Borrowdale geology at dawn, Honister Pass at midday, Buttermere wildlife in the afternoon, and one of only two accredited Dark Sky sites in the Lake District af
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A single day through Castlerigg, Keswick, Honister Pass, Grasmere and one of the Lake District's two accredited Dark Sky sites — built around history, not
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Cumberland sausage, sticky toffee pudding, Grasmere Gingerbread and Kendal mint cake — the real working history behind the region's food, built into one c
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Beatrix Potter didn't just \
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Tarn Hows is famous for its view. What Beatrix Potter actually bought here in 1930 was an entire working estate — and the tenant families whose lives depe
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Tarn Hows looks entirely natural. It isn't — it's a two-stage landform, glacial basin first, deliberate Victorian landscaping second, and there's a reason
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Keswick has no railway, the purest graphite ever mined, a market older than most of England's towns, and a lake ten minutes from the square. An honest guide to
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