Visiting the Lake District: Our Guides to the Walks, Parking and Days Out
Before a day in the Lakes, everyone asks the same questions. Which walk? How long will it take, and how steep is it? Where do we park, and will there be space? Can the children manage it? Where do we get a coffee afterwards? The answers are out there, spread across dozens of walking sites, official pages and old blog posts, and some of them stopped being true years ago.
Our visitor guides gather them into one page for each place. We read what the walking sites, the National Trust, the National Park and the boat and bus operators have published, compare it, link to the best of it and say plainly what has changed. Every guide carries the date it was last checked, and more are on the way.
What you will find in a guide
- Every walk, compared. Distance, height gained, time, where it starts and who it suits: families, dog walkers, a first fell, or a big day out. Each walk has the best published guides to it, with what each one is good at.
- Our own maps. A map of every route and a height profile that shows exactly where the climbing comes.
- Getting there and parking. Every car park on a map, with who runs it, how big it is and how to pay, plus the buses and boats that let you leave the car behind.
- Food and places to stay, from the reviews and the places' own pages.
- The practical things: toilets, phone signal, dogs, swimming, path closures and what to do in an emergency.
- The seasons, the events and the stories, and how the place has been painted over the last two hundred years.
- Paintings of the place beside every walk.
Visiting Buttermere
Buttermere is one of the few lakes you can walk all the way round, and the valley has walks for every kind of visitor, from a level stroll with a tunnel in it to some of the finest ridges in the Lakes. The Buttermere guide compares nine of them:
| Walk | Distance | Climb |
|---|---|---|
| Buttermere lake circuit | 7.4 km | 80 m |
| Scale Force | 6.3 km | 140 m |
| Rannerdale Knotts and the bluebell valley | 6.5 km | 520 m |
| Haystacks from Gatesgarth | 7.5 km | 540 m |
| Fleetwith Pike by Fleetwith Edge | 6.7 km | 570 m |
| Robinson by High Snockrigg | 7.4 km | 730 m |
| Red Pike, High Stile and High Crag | 12.4 km | 860 m |
| Whiteless Pike, Wandope and Grasmoor | 12.9 km | 1,110 m |
| The Crummock Water circuit | 14.7 km | 220 m |
The guide is full of the things that are easy to get wrong on the day. The National Trust car parks and the one at Gatesgarth take coins only, and there is no cash machine in the valley. From 1 April to 30 June a short stretch of the lake path near the village closes so that common sandpipers can nest, so choose your direction round the lake before you set off. Boat permits on Buttermere and Crummock Water were suspended when the guide was last checked, in October 2026. And in summer the Honister Rambler bus means you can leave the car in Keswick altogether.
It also tells the valley's stories, from the Maid of Buttermere to Wainwright's love of Haystacks and the legend of Rannerdale's Secret Valley, and shows how painters from Turner onwards have seen the lake.
Read the Buttermere guide · Buttermere paintings and prints
Visiting Catbells
Catbells, at 451 metres, is the fell that many people climb first, and for good reason: a short, steep path with two scrambly rock steps leads to one of the best views in the Lakes, straight down onto Derwentwater. The Catbells guide compares seven ways to do it:
| Walk | Distance | Climb |
|---|---|---|
| Catbells by boat from Keswick | 4.9 km | 400 m |
| Catbells from Hawes End | 7.1 km | 440 m |
| Catbells from Grange | 7.2 km | 450 m |
| Catbells on foot from Keswick | 10.6 km | 490 m |
| Catbells, Maiden Moor and High Spy | 15.1 km | 800 m |
| The Newlands Round | 16.5 km | 1,020 m |
| Round Derwentwater | 17.0 km | 250 m |
The guide's advice is practical and blunt. Don't park on the verges: a ticket is £70, and the lane below Catbells has seen more of them than anywhere else in Cumberland. Come by boat or bus instead; the Keswick Launch drops you at Hawes End, at the foot of the fell. There are no toilets at the start. Go early, before nine on a fine day, or there will be queues at the rock steps, and carry water, because the path is short but steep and open to the sun.
Catbells has its stories too: the door into the back of the hill that Beatrix Potter gave to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, the Potter family's summers at Lingholm, the National Trust's first land in the Lake District at Brandelhow in 1902, and the lead mines that worked the fell for more than three centuries.
Read the Catbells guide · Catbells paintings and prints
The Lake District with Kids
Our people guides are a different kind. Instead of one place for every visitor, each covers one kind of visit across the whole Lake District. The Lake District with Kids collects what parents, walking guides and the operators themselves say, in their own words, dated and linked. Where they disagree, it shows both sides rather than picking one.
Some of the answers, as they stood on 3 October 2026:
- Is Catbells all right for children? Sources put the youngest age anywhere from three to ten; it depends on the route, because the direct path has two short rock steps.
- Where is the best base? There is no agreement. Keswick, Ambleside and Bowness all have their champions, and their critics.
- The boats: under-fives travel free on the big four lakes, Windermere, Ullswater, Derwentwater and Coniston, say the operators.
- Swimming: allowed in most lakes, but not in the reservoirs, Ennerdale, Haweswater, Thirlmere and Kentmere, says the National Park.
- When it rains: most parents go out anyway, then head indoors.
The guide also keeps a list of what has changed since many older guides were written. South Lakes Safari Zoo closed at the end of 2024, though the Lake District Wildlife Park is open. Wray Castle's building is closed for refurbishment, but its grounds and shore are open. The Pencil Museum in Keswick closes at its old site on 1 November 2026 and is due to reopen in March 2027.
Read the Lake District with Kids guide
The Lake District for Older Visitors
The Lake District for Older Visitors is for anyone planning a trip with a parent or grandparent, or for themselves, when steps, distances and toilets matter more than summits. It quotes the boat and railway operators, the National Trust, the National Park and the people who have done it, and where the popular guides and the places themselves disagree, it says so.
Some of the answers, as they stood on 3 October 2026:
- The easiest boat: MV Swift on Windermere, step-free at Bowness, Ambleside and Lakeside, with a lift and an accessible toilet. The Derwentwater launches are four steps down, with a handrail.
- Is it really flat? Popular guides call Tarn Hows flat. The National Park grades it 'For some', with stretches as steep as 1 in 5; its flattest routes are graded 'For all'.
- The bus pass is valid on Stagecoach buses in the Lakes, free from 9.30am on weekdays and all day at weekends and on bank holidays.
- Scooters and parking: the National Trust lends free mobility scooters at Tarn Hows, booked ahead, and parks Blue Badge holders free.
- The pace: the advice the care guides share is one big outing a day, with time to rest either side.
Read the Lake District for Older Visitors guide
E-Biking in the Lake District
The newest people guide is about one kind of trip: E-Biking in the Lake District. It covers where to hire, where you may ride, how far a battery goes on Lakeland hills and where to charge it, for e-bikes, electric mountain bikes and ordinary ones too, in the words of the National Park, Forestry England, the hire shops and the riders themselves.
Some of the answers, as they stood on 4 October 2026:
- Bridleways: a legal e-bike counts as a pedal cycle, so it may go on roads, cycle paths, bridleways and byways, giving way to walkers and horses. Footpaths are for people on foot.
- Hire: the shops' own sites showed £49 to £65 for a day on an e-hybrid or hardtail, and £80 to £110 on a full-suspension electric mountain bike.
- Charging: there is no public charging network today, whatever older guides say. Riders charge where they sleep, or ask at a café or pub.
- Trains and boats: Northern's local trains carry bikes free without booking, and Windermere Lake Cruises takes e-bikes on its Red and Yellow cruises for £2.
- Whinlatter or Grizedale? Both are Forestry England forests with hire on site. Grizedale renamed its trails in 2026, so older guides use the old names.
It also tells the stories behind the routes: the Victorian road book that called the road over Honister 'simply a mass of loose stones', the old Keswick railway, the forests at Grizedale and Whinlatter, the Roman road over High Street and the Fred Whitton Challenge.
Read the E-Biking in the Lake District guide
Keeping the guides right
Car parks change their prices, cafés close, boats stop calling at piers, and paths shut for nesting birds. Every guide says when it was last checked, and every price and timetable comes with its date or a link to the source. If you find something out of date, please let us know. You will always find the full list of guides under Visitor Guides in the menu.
For more ideas, see our guides to the best viewpoints, the tarns and the Lake District month by month.
The art on the pages
The paintings beside each walk are prints you can buy: impressions of the places, not photographs of them. They come in 40cm, 70cm and 90cm, as prints or canvases, from £59.99 unframed to £209.99 for a 90cm framed canvas, with frames in black, white or natural wood. Everything is made to order: printing takes 2-5 working days, then UK delivery 3-7 working days, and a painting of a walk they have done makes a fine reminder of the day.