The Lake District's Hidden Gems

The Lake District's famous places are famous for good reason. But the national park is 912 square miles, and most visitors spend their time in a fraction of it — Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Keswick. The quiet corners are not secret. They are simply the places without a car park sign or a gift shop, which turns out to be most of what keeps a place quiet. Here are six of them, plus a handful more worth knowing about.

1. Blea Tarn

Blea Tarn sits in a hollow between the Great Langdale and Little Langdale valleys, on the road that climbs toward Wrynose Pass. It is small, still, and almost entirely undeveloped — a scrap of woodland on one shore, open fell on the other — and on a calm day the Langdale Pikes sit in its reflection so cleanly that photographs of it rarely need any editing at all.

It is easily reached by car, with a small National Trust car park a short walk from the water, and a path circling the tarn that takes about half an hour at an easy pace. Despite sitting in the heart of the fells, with barely a building in sight, it asks almost nothing of the visitor — no fitness, no navigation, no ticket.

2. Surprise View

Just past Ashness Bridge on the B5289 above Derwentwater, the road opens without warning onto a view that genuinely earns its name: the whole lake laid out below, with Bassenthwaite Lake — the only body of water in the national park officially called a "lake," as opposed to a "water," "mere," or "tarn" — visible in the distance beyond it.

What makes Surprise View worth knowing about is the lack of effort involved. There is no walk, no car park fee, no queue. You pull in at the roadside, and the view is simply there. Cat Bells rises directly across the water, and on a clear day the whole of Borrowdale opens out to the south.

3. Newlands Valley

The Newlands Valley runs south from Keswick toward Buttermere, and is one of those Lake District valleys that has somehow stayed almost entirely free of development. There are working farms, a scatter of cottages, and not much else — no major attraction, no village centre, nothing that draws a coach. What it offers instead is the kind of quiet that is genuinely difficult to find within a few miles of Keswick: long views down a green valley floor, fells rising steeply on both sides, and the sense of having found a Lake District that has barely changed in a century.

Walkers can follow the valley floor as far as Dale Head at its southern end, but the drive alone — a single road, no through traffic, climbing gently between Catbells and the Newlands fells — is a worthwhile detour in its own right.

4. The Duddon Valley

Wordsworth knew the River Duddon from childhood, and between 1804 and 1820 he wrote a sequence of 34 sonnets about it — published as The River Duddon, A Series of Sonnets — that received more praise in his lifetime than almost anything else he wrote. JMW Turner read them and was moved to visit and paint the Duddon estuary himself. None of which has done much to draw visitors here: the valley, also known as Dunnerdale, remains one of the least frequented parts of the national park, much as it was two centuries ago.

The valley runs roughly from the foot of Wrynose Pass down to Broughton-in-Furness, past the small hamlets of Seathwaite and Ulpha. At Seathwaite, the Newfield Inn — where Wordsworth himself is recorded to have stopped — still serves the valley's handful of residents and the occasional passing walker. The church at Seathwaite commemorates Robert Walker, a parson there for over sixty years, whom Wordsworth called "that lowly, great, good man."

5. Sandwick and the Eastern Shore of Ullswater

Most visitors to Ullswater see it from the western shore, or from the deck of the steamer. Far fewer walk the eastern shore path between Howtown and Glenridding, past the small hamlet of Sandwick — which is a genuine oversight, since Alfred Wainwright himself called this stretch "the most beautiful and rewarding walk in Lakeland."

The path undulates along the shoreline through woodland and open fell, with the lake almost constantly in view and the crowds of Glenridding and Pooley Bridge left behind entirely. Most walkers take the steamer one way — from Glenridding to Howtown — and walk back, making it a half-day outing that needs no car at either end.

6. Loweswater

Loweswater has been described, not entirely unfairly, as the lake nobody can quite remember the name of. Tucked into the far west of the national park beyond Crummock Water and Buttermere, it is one of the smallest of the sixteen lakes, has no facilities at its shore, and draws a fraction of the visitors of its better-known neighbours.

It is also, unusually for the Lake District, one of the few lakes that flows away from the centre of the national park rather than toward it — a quirk of geography that has helped keep it off the main tourist routes. No powered boats are permitted, so the loudest thing on the water is usually the wind. A circular walk around the shore, partly through Holme Wood, takes around two hours at an easy pace.

A few more worth knowing

Beyond the six above, a handful of other places reward the same kind of attention: the lay-by on the Kirkstone road where the valley opens unexpectedly toward Brothers Water; the gate onto open fell above Troutbeck, looking across to the Ill Bell ridge; and Esthwaite Water, the small lake near Hawkshead where Beatrix Potter fished from her own boat — privately owned, but visible and lovely from the surrounding footpaths on our Beatrix Potter Hidden Country and Beatrix Potter Hill Top & Windermere Cruise tours.

None of these are secrets in the sense of being undiscoverable. They are on every map. What they lack, almost without exception, is a car park with a sign and a gift shop at the end of it — and that, in the end, is most of what separates a quiet place from a crowded one.

Our bespoke private tours are built for exactly this kind of exploring — no fixed itinerary, no shared timetable, just the places a guide who knows the area thinks you should see.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources & further reading

• Lake District National Park Authority — The Ullswater Way
• National Trust — History of Eskdale and the Duddon Valley
• Wikipedia — The River Duddon and Wordsworth's sonnets
• TheLakeDistrict.org — Loweswater area guide