Tr avel report LAKE DISTRICT
when even the tourist hotspots are quiet. Because it’s barely 90 minutes away, we often go for the weekend and even more often just for the day. In November, we treated ourselves to a week in a cottage on Windermere.
Near Sawrey is best known for Hill Top, the home of children’s author Beatrix Potter. For me, Far Sawrey is perhaps synonymous with the Windermere Ferry. And it’s just a few hundred yards from the ferry turnaround, in Mitchell Wyke Bay that we based ourselves in a terraced property owned by the Freshwater Biological Association. The laboratory is a familiar site to ferry users on the end of a rocky promontory poking out into the lake. And, on the opposite side of the road, it’s now also the site of four holiday cottages that the laboratory - a membership association and registered charity - have just refurbished to help pay for its research.
The result is a fabulously remote base only a few minutes ferry ride from the bright lights of Windermere.
Indeed, a couple of times I took my bike across the ferry in the early evening to stock up at Booths and the lights and bustle of the Lake District’s busiest resort feels like Vegas after the solitude of Mitchell Wyke Bay. The nearest pub on our side is a belter - The Cuckoo Brow Inn, and it’s just a short, although steep, walk away. I’m sure driving up the hill and walking back down has led to many bracing morningafter walks.
From this base, we explored the fells, roads and forests of the park. Claife Heights and Grizedale are beautiful mountain bike and walking spots easily accessible without the need to resort to the car.
Further afield, on the other side of Kirkstone Pass, we walked up on to the domineering peak of Fairfield from Hartsop and charged down via the epic St Sunday Crag as a rainbow dropped into Ullswater below us.
The Lakes is fabulously diverse and every visit uncovers a new surprise. At peak times, it pays to look for somewhere out of the National Park itself but being centrally based in the off season gives you the opportunity to really spread your wings. We took the opportunity to drive up to the North Lakes. We headed for Keswick and over Newlands Pass to Buttermere. From here, we scrambled up the fantastic Sourmilk Gill and then on to the top of Red Pike, High Stile and High Cragg before we dropped back to Buttermere and fuelled up at the Bridge Inn, where we decide a week hadn’t been anything like long enough.
Turns out my dad probably was on the money. Although that Wicker Man does look good…