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The Newlands Valley runs south-west from the western edge of Derwentwater, between the Causey Pike ridge and the Newlands Fells, for about five miles until it closes at the foot of Newlands Hause and the road rises steeply over the pass to Buttermere. It is one of the quietest valleys in the northern Lakes and one of the most beautiful.
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 the south, Newlands has an intimacy and a lack of commercial development that makes it feel more genuinely rural — more like the agricultural valley it actually is — than the more famous approaches to the same mountains.
The valley floor is meadow and pasture, divided by the network of dry stone walls into the small fields characteristic of upland Cumbrian farming. The farms are old — the buildings are largely 17th and 18th century, built from the same local stone as the walls, coloured the same grey-green by the same slate and volcanic rock. The church at Little Town — the model for the church in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle — is at the head of the lower valley.
On the valley sides, above the intake walls, the fells rise steeply to the ridgeline. The western side of Newlands is the back of the Causey Pike ridge — a spectacular profile when seen from the Keswick direction, and a very different perspective from the rough, open ground of the fell top that the ridge walkers experience.
The moors above Newlands were mined for copper from at least the medieval period, and the industry intensified significantly in the Elizabethan era when Queen Elizabeth I's Company of Mines Royal brought German miners to the Lake District to work the copper deposits. The remains of this industry are visible on the higher ground — the spoil heaps, the adit entrances (now sealed), the discolouration of the rock where copper oxidation has stained the surface green and blue.
The copper mining story of Newlands — its medieval origins, the German miners, the Company of Mines Royal and the eventually declining industry — is one of the most interesting industrial heritage narratives in the Lake District, and mostly invisible to visitors who simply drive through the valley.
On the eastern flank of Newlands, directly above the western shore of Derwentwater, is Catbells — a fell of modest height (451 metres) but extraordinary popularity, largely because it offers a genuinely fell-top experience accessible to walkers of modest fitness. The view from the Catbells ridge — east over Derwentwater with Blencathra beyond it, west into the Newlands Valley — is one of the finest short-walk views in the Lake District.
Beatrix Potter walked on Catbells during her summer visits to the Lakes and mentions it in several letters.
The road over Newlands Hause at the head of the valley is one of the finest minor mountain roads in the Lake District — steep, narrow, with a series of hairpin bends as it climbs to the pass and the view opens dramatically to Buttermere and Crummock Water. The descent to Buttermere is one of the best moments on the western Lakes circuit.
On our 8 Lakes tours, Newlands Valley is part of the Derwentwater section narrative — your expert storyteller explains the copper mining history and the literary connections as you pass through.
The Newlands Valley is part of the 8 Lakes Morning Tour and 8 Lakes Afternoon Tour.