Windermere and the Lake District: A Guide That Doesn’t Pretend It’s Not Crowded

The Lake District is the most visited national park in the UK, receiving around 20 million visits annually. Windermere is its busiest lake, and Bowness-on-Windermere at its eastern shore is the most tourist-dense settlement in the park. On a July or August bank holiday weekend, the roads into Bowness are at a standstill from around 10am. Bowness itself has an ice cream shop that has a queue outside it at all times of day as if this were a condition of the landscape.

That said: this guide works backwards from that fact. The Lake District is worth visiting despite the crowds, and the best approaches involve avoiding the most predictable things in the most predictable places at the most predictable times.

Lake Windermere

England’s largest lake, 17 kilometres long and up to 67 metres deep. The most popular activity is the Windermere Lake Cruises ferry service between Bowness, Waterhead (near Ambleside), and Lakeside. Using the ferry as transport rather than sightseeing makes more sense: it gets you from one end of the lake to the other in about an hour, avoids driving the congested main road, and gives good views of the lake’s wooded shoreline. Round trip tickets run around £14.

The western shore of the lake, accessible via the small car ferry to Far Sawrey, is substantially quieter than the Bowness side. The Claife Heights walk above the western shore passes through oak woodland and gives views across the lake that you simply don’t get from the main road. Start from near the ferry landing at Far Sawrey and you can be alone within ten minutes.

Ambleside and Grasmere

Ambleside, at the northern end of Windermere, is a better base for walkers than Bowness: more independent restaurants, notably less crowded, and within walking distance of the Grasmere valley.

Grasmere is the Wordsworth village. His grave is in St. Oswald’s churchyard (the church itself dates from the 13th century), and Dove Cottage where he lived and wrote from 1799 to 1808 is a 10-minute walk from the village centre. Admission to Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum runs around £10 and the guided house tour is worth taking. The cottage is genuinely small; it held Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, his wife, their five children, and Coleridge as a frequent house guest, which gives you some context for the productivity of those years.

Grasmere Gingerbread has been made to the same recipe in the small shop by the church since 1854. Buy some. It’s very good and you’ll feel pleased with yourself for buying something local.

Coniston and Hawkshead

These two villages deserve more attention than they typically get from visitors focused on Windermere.

Coniston Water is narrower and less visited than Windermere. The steam-powered Victorian yacht Gondola offers cruises with a more intimate atmosphere than the main lake ferries. Coniston is where Donald Campbell died attempting the world water speed record in 1967: his Bluebird boat was recovered from the lake floor in 2001 and is now on display at the Ruskin Museum in the village.

Hawkshead is a village of whitewashed medieval buildings, mostly pedestrianised, with no through road for cars. Wordsworth went to school here. The Beatrix Potter Gallery (National Trust, around £7) holds original illustrations from the Peter Rabbit books in a house Potter herself once worked in.

Where to Stay

Accommodation in the Lake District is expensive in peak season and books up months ahead. Ambleside is a better base than Bowness. For a splurge, The Samling above Windermere has lake views and a notable restaurant. For something more practical, the B&Bs on the Ambleside main street are well positioned and reasonably priced.

Self-catering cottages in the western lake valleys (Langdale, Eskdale, Coniston) give you the quieter parts of the park, which makes a real difference.

Practical Notes

Train to Windermere station from Manchester Piccadilly and Lancaster, then bus or taxi the 1.5km to the lakeside. For the western and northern parts of the park, a car is necessary.

The M6 from the south delivers enormous weekend traffic volumes to the park entry points. Arriving before 8am Saturday or after 6pm Sunday reduces the road pain significantly. The best visiting months are May, early June, and September: fewer school holiday visitors, green landscape, and the midges (biting insects that cluster near still water in July and August) are far less active.