Lake District
The Lake District is an area of immense beauty, great diversity and striking contrast from its high fells to deep valleys, by its cascading rivers, tarns and great lakes, by woods, fields and its lovely quaint villages and hamlets. Cumbria’s mountainous landscape, deepest valleys and longest lakes have provided inspiration for generations of artists, poets and writers from Wordsworth, Ruskin, Wainwright and Beatrix Potter.
England's largest National Park is now a World Heritage Site, home to Scafell Pike - its highest mountain, Wastwater - its deepest lake and thriving communities like Keswick and Bowness-on-Windermere.
Walking in the Lakes is a lifelong ever-changing experience. It offers a vast range of very good, well maintained paths which give you full access to the hills, fells and lakes. No matter where you walk, whether it be along the valley, or to the crest of a low-level hill you are rewarded with a 360-degree panorama of fells and beauty.
Whatever the weather, throughout the seasons the Lake District offers an ever-changing kaleidoscope of mood and colour. It really is one of the most special places on earth and really needs to be visited and its paths walked.
It is hard to believe that Borrowdale, now part of the National Park, was once a hive of industrial activity with iron smelting, charcoal burning, and mining for copper and graphite. Scattered hamlets reflect the Nordic influence in their names, while stone walls and vernacular buildings chronicle centuries of farming.
Today farming struggles to make a living Leading south from Derwent water, Borrowdale is surrounded by rugged crags, inviting fells, old mine workings and wooded valleys with clean rivers.
The fine sessile oak woodlands are of ecological interest, and the damp, western climate supports internationally important lichens, mosses and insects. An alder woodland and marsh along the shores of Derwentwater provide an ideal nesting site for wildfowl and waders.