Private tour from Armathwaite Hall
Private 10 Lakes Tour —
exclusively yours, from Armathwaite Hall
Ten lakes, a lake cruise and your own local guide — a day kept for you alone
Private tour from Armathwaite Hall
Ten lakes, a lake cruise and your own local guide — a day kept for you alone
Duration
8 hoursFull day
Lakes
10and mountains
Cruise
IncludedUllswater* ticket
Your party
Up to 7just your party
Collection
Your hoteldoor-to-door
Season
Mar–Octspring to autumn
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google
£915per group, up to seven guests
Enquire about your day Choose your date · a personal replyBook it with your room. We don't run every tour every day, so reserve your private day when you book your stay.
Already at the hotel? Call us on 015394 55507.
You have chosen Armathwaite Hall with care. The deer park, Skiddaw rising behind the house, Bassenthwaite Lake lying silver in front, and for a few days the city can wait. By the second morning, a view like that makes you want the rest.
Begin with the one day that shows you all of it: ten lakes, breathtaking mountain views, long sweeping valleys and an hour on the water, in a UNESCO World Heritage landscape. It is the only ten-lakes tour in the Lake District with a cruise included, and taken privately it is kept for you alone — your own guide, your own vehicle, and nobody on board you did not bring.
Lake District Tours is an independent tour company based in Kendal, and our guides are local people. The private 10 Lakes Tour is £915 per group for up to seven guests, with collection from Armathwaite Hall, the cruise ticket and every stop included.
A view like the one from the terrace makes you wonder what lies beyond it. A private day with us is the answer.
It begins at the front door. We collect you in the morning, and from that moment there is nothing to find, nothing to book, nothing to queue for and nothing to drive. Your own car stays where you parked it. Bassenthwaite Lake, one of the ten, is the one you woke up to. Keswick is fifteen minutes down the road, and beyond it lie Derwentwater, Borrowdale and Buttermere, Ullswater and the boat, and Windermere and Grasmere in the south. In the early evening you are brought back up the drive to the door, with the day still fresh in your mind and the evening ahead of you.
You could take the car instead. From here the obvious road is Borrowdale: narrow and walled, and ending in Honister Pass at one in four, with the driver watching the wall and the van coming the other way while everyone else looks at the view. On a private tour your driver-guide takes the wheel, and tells you what you are looking at as you go. What driving these roads is really like.
For more ideas for your stay, from the deer park to the stone circle above Keswick, see our guide to things to do near Armathwaite Hall.
Your day starts and ends at the door of Armathwaite Hall. Tap a lake or a stop to see it. The route can change with the weather and the roads on the day.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
“We’re so glad we weren’t driving.” Our guests often tell us so.
The mountain roads are narrow and steep. Your driver watches the road, so you can watch the views.
Experienced, qualified drivers who know every pass and bend, in every kind of weather.
Every turn of the road brings another view. All you have to do is look.
Not just a German badge on the bonnet and a fancy French word for the driver. There is more than one kind of luxury, and we are happy to do either properly.
The door held open, the cap doffed, a little formality and everything done just so. If that is the luxury you enjoy, say so and it is yours, with pleasure.
Luxury suited to modern lifestyles and refined tastes. It isn't what you are driven in. It is how the day feels, and what you take home from it.
Every seat, every stop and your guide's whole attention. Personal hosting, from the first greeting of the morning to the last view of the lake.
Stops timed so the crowds have thinned and the gingerbread queue is short, and a guide who knows exactly where the photographs are.
Someone who lives in Cumbria and knows these roads in rain, snow and low sun. Discover hidden stories, not just locations.
Unhurried, restful and a world away from the city — the kind of day that stays with you long after you have gone back.
Ten lakes, one boat, one guide — and the whole day kept for you alone.The luxury isn't the car. It's the person beside you, and what they know.
The route changes with the weather and the roads on the day, so the lakes don't always come in this order.
01
Windermere
England's largest lake
02
Brothers Water
Small and quiet
03
Ullswater
Where we cruise*
04
Bassenthwaite Lake
The lake at your door
05
Derwentwater
Keswick's lake
06
Buttermere
Perfectly proportioned
07
Crummock Water
Next to Buttermere
08
Thirlmere
The drowned valley
09
Grasmere
Wordsworth's lake
10
Rydal Water
Small and still
Breathtaking mountain scenery all day, from the minibus and at every stop — Skiddaw and Blencathra above Keswick, Helvellyn over Thirlmere, the high peaks around Buttermere — with long sweeping valleys between them that most visitors never reach. The road takes you over four passes, including Kirkstone Pass and Honister Pass, where the road climbs at one in four — the one everybody remembers.
A ring of ancient stones on a plateau surrounded by mountains — Castlerigg is older than Stonehenge, with a better view. And at the top of Honister Pass, England's last working slate mine.
An hour on the lake by boat*, Ashness Bridge with Derwentwater and Skiddaw behind it, Surprise View, where the lake appears beneath you all at once, and Moss Force, a waterfall on the open hillside that most visitors never see. Photo opportunities at every one.
Borrowdale, where the mountains close in on both sides, then over Honister to Buttermere and Crummock Water, and back through the Newlands valley. A loop most visitors never complete.
An hour in Keswick to eat where you like — a working market town, with market days on Thursday and Saturday. And the village of Grasmere, with its gingerbread still baked to a secret recipe from 1854. The queue is shorter with us, because your guide times it that way.
Every valley on this route has a story — a drowned valley, a poet's daffodils, a famous scandal. Your guide tells them on the day.
Rated Excellent by our guests on TripAdvisor, Viator and Google.
★★★★★"Honister Pass alone was worth the price. The drive up through the Borrowdale valley, the mine at the summit, the descent to Buttermere — it was completely unlike anything I had seen in the Lakes before. And then the gingerbread at the end. A perfect day."
Margaret T. · Edinburgh
★★★★★"We have been to the Lake District seven times. We thought we knew it. This tour showed us that we had been seeing the surface of it. The Newlands Valley, Crummock Water, Moss Force — none of it was on our map. The guide's knowledge was simply outstanding. Book this tour."
David & Susan H. · London
This tour can be added to, or adapted as part of, a bespoke tour — tailor-made for each individual booking. Bespoke is where imagination comes in: a picnic on the grass above the water, a gentle lakeside stroll, a laid-back lunch in a traditional Lakes pub where the locals know the landlord by name, secret places that never make the guidebooks and sacred spots where people have gone to be still for thousands of years.
Perhaps it is a birthday, an anniversary or a proposal that deserves a better backdrop than a restaurant. Tell us what the stay is for, and we will design the day around it, fitted around the evening you have a table booked.
From Armathwaite Hall, bespoke tours run as full days.
From £942 for a full day per group · £95 planning fee, redeemed against your tour
Find out about bespoke toursPrivate and bespoke tours across the Lake District, from your hotel, exclusively yours.
Read moreTell us your date and how many of you there are, and we will come back to you personally.
Every tour is led by one of a small team of local guides — Tim, Gillian, Sandra and Steve — who live in Cumbria and drive these roads in every season. The team rotates, so we can't promise a particular guide, but whoever you get will know the ten lakes in rain, snow and low sun. We are based in Kendal, our vehicles are licensed for private hire, and we are fully insured. Lake District Tours is independent and not affiliated with Armathwaite Hall.
Written by Gillian in .
From Armathwaite Hall we collect for full-day private tours and full-day bespoke tours. The shorter morning and afternoon tours pair into one full day; tell us which two you would like when you enquire.
Photographs: hero DeFacto (CC BY-SA 4.0), Kreuzschnabel (CC BY-SA 3.0), Diliff (CC BY-SA 3.0), Brian Clift (CC BY-SA 2.0), Peter Skynner (CC BY-SA 2.0), HeritageDaily (CC BY-SA 4.0), Russel Wills (CC BY-SA 2.0), Richard Sutcliffe (CC BY-SA 2.0), Stephen Darlington (CC BY-SA 2.0), User:Diliff (CC BY-SA 3.0), Richard Thomas (CC BY-SA 2.0), Hansheap (CC BY-SA 4.0), Smudge 9000 from North Kent Coast, England (CC BY-SA 2.0), lakes Mystery Ray (CC BY-SA 4.0), Graham Robson (CC BY-SA 2.0), Mick Knapton at English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0), Bill Boaden (CC BY-SA 2.0), Peter S (CC BY-SA 2.0), TXGemGem (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Placeholder photography — to be replaced with our own.
