Lake District Delights
The Lake District is profoundly beautiful. It attracts walkers, climbers, ramblers, boating enthusiasts, campers, photographers, nature lovers, history buffs and seekers of beauty in equal measure.
What is the Lake District?
The Lake District is a series of mountains, valleys and lakes that are crammed into a small corner of the northern English county of Cumbria, close to the coast near the Scottish border.
Where is The Lake District?
It is the only place in England where you can climb a mountain in the morning, walk to the seaside for lunch and take a local bus to a different country for tea.
When is the best time to visit The Lake District?
This is England, so there are no guarantees regarding the weather, but we do seem to be having a run of hot dry summers, and long may they continue. Having said that the Lakes are wonderful at different times of year.
Photographers in particular often come when the weather seems least pleasant, looking for those perfect moments when the broken sunlight sets the land ablare in a riot of glorious colour and shades.
What is the best place to stay in The Lake District?
There are many places, snce visitors have been coming for more than a couple of centuries. Take a look at these good hotels in Cumbria.
How to get to The Lakes
You can drive there from London in about 7 hours. Alternatively a flight to Liverpool, Newcastle or Edinburgh will have you a lot closer to your final destination. Public transport includes a train which hugs the coastline of Cumbria. Busses get into the major towns of the Lake District such as Keswick, Coniston, Grasmere, Hawkshead and Windermere.
Boats offer seasonal ferry services on most of the lakes themselves, but your feet are the best tool for exploring the fells and seeing the views for wich the Lakes are rightly famous.
There is lots of forest to walk through on lower slopes, with some famous waterfalls and picturesque valleys. Some walks are popular, others are quiet.
If you want you really can get away and find yourself alone on a mountain or in a woodland of your very own for the day.
Once you get above the treeline, the vistas open up and the incredible views will take your breath away.
Best Lakeland guidebooks
These are without doubt the hand-drawn books of A E Wainwright. They are an institution and few walkers go on to the fells (the hills) without a copy. Wainwright wrote and illustrated beautiful compact books that are the perfect accompanyment for any Lake District walk.
His style of writing was highly unusual, but suffused with a genuine love of the countryside which comes across to the reader. His hand-drawn maps are very accurate and are updated by the publishers as old footpaths are replaced by new routes. The spirit of the Wainwright guides has not been in anyway diminshed by passing years and they are still the most popular guides for walkers and lovers of the Lake District.
