The Lake District Bucket List

Some places reward a list. The Lake District is one of them — not because it is a theme park to be ticked off, but because it is large enough and various enough that a visit without intention can dissolve into car parks and gift shops. These fifteen experiences are chosen by guides who have spent years on these roads, in these villages, inside these rooms. They are the things our guests talk about on the way home.

1. Walk up Orrest Head before the day begins

In 1930, a young man from Blackburn stepped off a train at Windermere station for the first time and walked up the hill opposite. What he saw from the top — the full sweep of Windermere below, the Coniston fells to the west, the Langdale Pikes rising beyond — changed the course of his life. His name was Alfred Wainwright. He returned the following year, moved to the Lakes permanently in 1941, and spent the next two decades producing the seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells — the most meticulous and beloved walking guides ever written about a single landscape.

Orrest Head is a twenty-minute walk from Windermere station. The path begins almost directly opposite the entrance. The summit is 238 metres. The view is not the highest in the Lakes but it may be the most complete: the full length of Windermere, the southern fells, the Langdale Pikes, and on a clear day the Coniston Old Man to the west. It is where we begin, in more ways than one.

2. Stand at the top of a mountain pass

The Lake District's dramatic road passes — Kirkstone, Wrynose, Honister — are part of what makes this landscape unlike anywhere else in England. But the one that stays with people longest is the route through the Langdale valleys toward Wrynose, where the valley floor gives way to open fell in a way that feels sudden and complete. The Langdale Pikes rise on one side. Blea Tarn — one of the most photographed views in the national park, with the Pikes reflected in still water — sits in a hollow between the two valleys. The road continues west into Wrynose, past the Three Shire Stone where Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmorland once met.

We will shortly be running a dedicated tour through the Langdale valleys, over Wrynose, and back via Blea Tarn — one of the most complete mountain day routes in the park. Details coming soon.

3. Sit inside the room where Beatrix Potter painted

Hill Top, the 17th-century farmhouse in Near Sawrey that Beatrix Potter bought in 1905, is not a museum in the conventional sense. The National Trust has preserved it exactly as she left it — the furniture she collected, the garden she planted, the rooms she described in letters to friends. What strikes visitors almost without exception is not the scale of the place (it is small, deliberately so) but the recognition: the staircase from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. The porch that frames Jemima Puddle-Duck. The garden she grew for herself, not for an illustration, that ended up in the illustrations anyway.

Entry to Hill Top requires a timed ticket. In high summer these sell out days in advance. Our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours secure entry as part of the itinerary — no queuing, no uncertainty, no arriving to find the last slot gone.

4. Take a cruise on Ullswater

Windermere is the largest lake and the most visited. Ullswater — stretching seven miles through three distinct reaches of valley — is the one that most visitors remember longest. Turner painted it. Wordsworth wrote about it. Dorothy Wordsworth walked its shore in early spring 1802 and wrote the journal entry that became her brother's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."

The Ullswater Steamers have run since 1859. Sitting on the upper deck as the eastern fells pass slowly on one side and the Helvellyn range rises on the other is one of those moments that tends to silence a conversation. The cruise connects Pooley Bridge in the north to Glenridding in the south, with a stop at Howtown on the eastern shore — where many walkers disembark for the return path along the lakeshore.

5. Visit Dove Cottage — and read the journal first

Wordsworth lived at Dove Cottage from 1799 to 1808 with his sister Dorothy and later his wife Mary. The cottage is small — kitchen, parlour, and bedrooms barely changed since the family left — and the Wordsworth Museum next door holds one of the finest collections of Romantic manuscripts in the world, including Dorothy's Grasmere Journals in her own hand.

Most visitors know about the cottage. Far fewer have read Dorothy's journal before they arrive. She was a remarkable observer — weather, light, the behaviour of water, the specific character of individual trees — and reading her descriptions of the garden at Dove Cottage before standing in it is one of those travel experiences that doubles the depth of what you see. The museum sells a paperback edition in the shop.

Grasmere village is worth an hour of its own. The Gingerbread Shop, in the old village schoolroom, has been making gingerbread to Sarah Nelson's original recipe since 1854. The recipe is locked in a bank vault. The gingerbread is genuinely unlike anything else.

Both our Wordsworth Morning Tour and Wordsworth Afternoon Tour pass through Grasmere and include Dove Cottage.

6. Find your own spot for wild swimming

The Lake District's water is cold, clear, and largely unmonitored — which is precisely the appeal. Wild swimming has grown into one of the most-searched activities in the national park, and the best spots tend to be the quieter tarns and lake edges rather than the main beaches: Rydal Water, the southern end of Buttermere, and the smaller becks that feed into Derwentwater are popular with people who know to look for them.

None of our scheduled tours are built around wild swimming, and we'd always say the same thing a good guide would say in person: check the water temperature and your own ability before going in, be aware that mountain becks and tarns can be considerably colder than they look, and never swim alone in remote spots. If a quiet lakeside stop happens to coincide with your tour and you fancy a dip, several of our routes pass right by the water.

7. Walk above a lake on a clear day

The Lake District rewards height. Almost any ridge walk — the Cat Bells ridge above Derwentwater, the path above Grasmere toward Helm Crag, the High Street ridge above Ullswater — opens views that make the lakes look like something poured carefully between the fells rather than the other way round.

You do not need to be a serious fell walker. Cat Bells, the small but perfectly formed summit above the western shore of Derwentwater, is 451 metres and can be climbed comfortably in an hour. The view from the top — Derwentwater below, Borrowdale stretching south, Skiddaw and Blencathra to the north — is what Lakeland guides describe simply as the Lake District in one glance. Wainwright rated it the finest short walk in all his guides.

8. Stand inside Castlerigg Stone Circle at dusk

Castlerigg was erected around 3000 BC — older than Stonehenge, older than the Egyptian pyramids, placed in an amphitheatre of mountains that looks as if it was designed for the purpose. Thirty-eight stones, the largest over two metres high, arranged in an irregular oval on a plateau above Keswick with an almost 360-degree view of the surrounding fells.

Archaeologists disagree about its purpose. What is not in question is the quality of the site: freely accessible, never feeling like a tourist attraction, and on an evening in late May or June — when the light lasts until nearly ten and the fells are still warm — as close to an ancient, uncomplicated place as England offers.

The summer solstice (21 June) draws people who want to watch the sunrise align with specific stones. It is not a commercial event. People simply gather.

9. Explore a historic house and its gardens

The Lake District and its surrounding area has an exceptional concentration of historic houses with gardens that have been tended, designed, and fought over for centuries. These are not stately homes preserved behind velvet rope. They are working houses — lived in, contested, altered, and added to — with gardens that carry the marks of everyone who has ever cared for them.

Levens Hall, near Kendal, has the oldest surviving topiary garden in the world. Laid out in 1694 by Guillaume Beaumont — who also designed the gardens at Hampton Court — it has been kept to the original design ever since: geometric shapes of yew and box clipped to the same forms for over three hundred years. The house is an Elizabethan manor built around a medieval pele tower. Private Tour: Levens Hall →

Sizergh Castle, a few miles north, grew over the centuries from a medieval pele tower into a substantial house now managed by the National Trust, with one of the largest limestone rock gardens in the country and a working kitchen garden with varieties grown here since the 18th century. Private Tour: Sizergh Castle →

Holker Hall, on the Cartmel peninsula, has gardens consistently ranked among the finest in England — a cascade, a kitchen garden, a wildflower meadow, and woodland. The hall has been the home of the Cavendish family for over 400 years. Private Tour: Holker Hall →

Dalemain Mansion, near Ullswater, is a Georgian façade over a medieval and Elizabethan core. The walled garden has been producing fruit, vegetables, and flowers since the 13th century, and the house remains a private family home. Private Tour: Dalemain Mansion →

Hutton in the Forest, north of Penrith, has been continuously inhabited since the 14th century with gardens developed across six centuries: walled garden, terraced walk, dovecote, and lake. Private Tour: Hutton in the Forest →

10. Eat somewhere that has earned 15 Michelin stars

The Lake District has 15 Michelin stars across 13 locations — more per square mile than anywhere in England outside London. That figure is not an accident. It reflects what happens when exceptional produce (Herdwick lamb, Cumbrian cheese, game from the fells, fish from the Solway coast) meets a landscape that draws serious chefs prepared to work somewhere genuinely beautiful.

L'Enclume in Cartmel holds three stars and is consistently ranked in the top ten restaurants in Britain. Simon Rogan, who opened it in 2002 in a former blacksmith's forge, farms his own ingredients on land nearby. The tasting menu changes with the seasons: when the asparagus is ready, it appears. When it is not, it doesn't.

Below the starred level, the landscape rewards exploration: the Drunken Duck above Ambleside has been a destination pub since the 1970s; the Punch Bowl at Crosthwaite in the Lyth Valley is the kind of village inn that cities spend decades failing to recreate; and the Gingerbread Shop in Grasmere — one room, one product, recipe locked in a bank vault since 1854 — is a different order of experience entirely but no less worth travelling for.

11. Spend a morning in a village that has kept its character

Hawkshead, where Wordsworth went to school and his handwriting is preserved on a desk in the original schoolroom, has no through road and has kept its character in a way that lakeside towns with main roads through them have not. The former solicitor's office where Beatrix Potter's husband William Heelis worked is now Tabitha Twitchit's, a bookshop dedicated to Potter's work and legacy. Our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours visit Hawkshead.

Cartmel has a priory that survived the dissolution of the monasteries through the argument that its north aisle served as the local parish church. It is one of the most beautiful small priories in England — and home to Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding and L'Enclume. Our bespoke private tours can include Cartmel on request.

Coniston has the mountain (the Old Man of Coniston, 803 metres, with a direct path from the village), the lake (where Donald Campbell died in Bluebird in 1967, and where the boat was recovered and restored), and the Ruskin Museum — the most significant collection of John Ruskin's work outside London. Both the Beatrix Potter Hidden Country tour and our bespoke private tours can take in Coniston.

12. Find a view that nobody else is looking at

The Lake District has famous views and it has forgotten ones. The famous views — Tarn Hows, the Langdale Pikes reflected in Blea Tarn, the view south from Loughrigg Fell — are extraordinary. They are also, in July and August, shared with several hundred other people.

The forgotten views require local knowledge: a particular lay-by on the Kirkstone road where the valley opens unexpectedly; a gate onto open fell above Troutbeck with a view of the Ill Bell ridge that most visitors drive past; the eastern shore of Ullswater at Sandwick, reached by a short path from the ferry, where you look back across the water toward the western mountains in afternoon light.

This is, ultimately, what local guides offer that no map or travel article can fully reproduce: the knowledge of where to stop, and when. Our bespoke private tours are built entirely around this — no fixed route, no shared timetable, just the places your guide thinks you should see.

13. Follow in Wainwright's footsteps

Alfred Wainwright produced his seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells between 1955 and 1966, drawing every map, every view, and writing every word entirely by hand. He walked every route himself — 214 fells, thousands of miles — and described each one with a precision and dry personal warmth that has never been matched. The guides remain in print, largely unchanged, and are still carried by walkers on the fells every day.

Wainwright's connection to this landscape is not simply historical. He is the reason many people come here. There is a formal list of all 214 summits — "the Wainwrights" — and people who complete all of them are known as Wainwright Completers. Dove Cottage in Grasmere, Orrest Head above Windermere, and the fells above Derwentwater are all places he wrote about with particular affection. Our Wordsworth Morning and Wordsworth Afternoon tours pass through Grasmere. Our 8 Lakes Morning, 8 Lakes Afternoon, and The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour tours cross the fells above Derwentwater. Orrest Head is opposite our Windermere pickup point.

14. Learn to read the landscape through its sheep

Most visitors walk past Herdwick sheep without a second glance. This is understandable — they are small, grey, and apparently unremarkable. It is also a mistake, because the Herdwick is as much a part of the Lake District landscape as the fells themselves, and understanding what they are and why they are here changes the way the whole place looks.

Herdwicks are one of the hardiest breeds in Britain. They winter on the high fells without shelter, eating whatever the mountain offers. They are hefted — born knowing their patch of fell, staying on it their whole lives without fencing, passing that knowledge to their lambs. Remove a Herdwick flock from a fell and the knowledge of that fell goes with them. The landscape the National Trust manages was shaped over centuries by these animals: the short-cropped grass on the high ridges, the absence of scrub on the open fell, the particular quality of the silence up there.

Beatrix Potter understood this. After the success of the Peter Rabbit books she used her royalties not for a London house but for farmland in the Lake District, and she spent decades breeding prize Herdwick flocks. She was one of the first breeders to take the genetics seriously. When she died in 1943 she left over 4,000 acres and fifteen farms to the National Trust, on the condition that the Herdwick flocks were maintained. They still are. The sheep grazing the fells above Near Sawrey today are descended from the flocks she kept. Our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours both pass through this landscape — our guides point this out, and it tends to reframe everything else that follows.

15. Let someone else do the driving

This is not a passive item on the list. The Lake District is one of the most congested national parks in Britain in high season — 912 square miles, a limited road network, 19 million visitors a year. The roads that lead to the best places are often the ones that become impassable in August. Car parks at the most popular attractions fill by nine in the morning.

A guided tour from Windermere train and bus station, Oxenholme station, Bowness, or Ambleside takes all of that away. The guide knows which road to take and when. The vehicle is small enough — our maximum is seven guests — to reach places larger coaches cannot go. And because you are not navigating, you are watching: the light on the water, the shape of the fell, the thing your guide is pointing to that you would have driven past.

Most guests, on the way back, say some version of the same thing: they saw more in one day than they would have managed in three on their own. That is not a sales argument. It is what the feedback consistently says.

See all tours — departing Windermere, Oxenholme, Bowness, and Ambleside →

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the single best thing to do in the Lake District?

For a first visit, the walk up Orrest Head above Windermere station followed by a cruise on Ullswater comes closest to capturing what the Lake District actually is. If time is limited, our The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour covers the greatest breadth in a single day without navigation and parking stress.

What should I not miss in the Lake District?

Orrest Head (the walk that changed Wainwright's life), Hill Top in Near Sawrey (on our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours), Dove Cottage in Grasmere (on our Wordsworth Morning and Wordsworth Afternoon tours), a cruise on Ullswater (on our The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour), Castlerigg Stone Circle (on our 8 Lakes Morning and 8 Lakes Afternoon tours), at least one historic house on a bespoke tour, and Grasmere gingerbread from the Gingerbread Shop.

How many days do you need in the Lake District?

Three to four days gives you enough time for both the southern and northern lakes, a literary property or two, a lake cruise, and a historic house. With two days, prioritise the south: Windermere, Grasmere, Hill Top, and Ullswater. With one day, our The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour or one of our 8 Lakes tours is the most efficient way to cover the highlights.

Does the Lake District have Michelin-starred restaurants?

Yes — 15 Michelin stars across 13 locations, more per square mile than anywhere in England outside London. L'Enclume in Cartmel holds three stars and is consistently ranked among the best restaurants in Britain. Our bespoke private tours can be routed through Cartmel on request.

What is the best time of year to visit the Lake District?

Late April to early June and September to October offer the best combination of good weather, good light, and manageable crowds. June is the best time for Castlerigg at the solstice — visited on our 8 Lakes Morning, 8 Lakes Afternoon, and The 10 Lakes Full-day Tour tours. Winter is quiet and often beautiful but some attractions have reduced hours.

Can you visit the Lake District without a car?

Yes. Windermere train and bus station connects directly to Manchester and London Euston, and is served by local bus routes from across the national park. All our tours depart from Windermere train and bus station, Oxenholme station, Bowness, and Ambleside, reaching parts of the national park — including Hill Top, the Langdale valleys, and the high passes — that public transport does not serve.

Where can you go wild swimming in the Lake District?

Popular spots include Rydal Water, the southern end of Buttermere, and various smaller becks and tarns away from the main beaches. Water is cold and largely unmonitored, so check the temperature and your own ability first — mountain becks and tarns can be considerably colder than they look — and never swim alone in remote spots.

What are Herdwick sheep and why are they important?

Herdwicks are one of the hardiest breeds in Britain, native to the Lake District fells. They are hefted — born knowing their patch of fell and staying on it without fencing, passing that knowledge to their lambs. Beatrix Potter was a prize-winning Herdwick breeder; when she died in 1943 she left over 4,000 acres and fifteen farms to the National Trust on the condition the Herdwick flocks were maintained. They still are. Our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours pass through this landscape.

What historic houses and gardens can you visit in the Lake District?

The area has an exceptional concentration: Levens Hall (world's oldest topiary garden, 1694), Sizergh Castle (medieval pele tower, National Trust gardens), Holker Hall (award-winning Cartmel gardens), Dalemain Mansion (Georgian house near Ullswater), and Hutton in the Forest (continuously inhabited since the 14th century). All available as private guided tours.

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Sources & further reading

• National Trust — Hill Top
• Wordsworth Grasmere (The Wordsworth Trust) — Dove Cottage
• English Heritage — Castlerigg Stone Circle
• Lake District National Park Authority
• National Trust — Beatrix Potter and her Herdwick legacy