The Lake District

The Lake District National Park is a mountainous part of Northern England famous for England’s highest mountains, numerous lakes, and idyllic English countryside. There are many towns in the Lake District to explore and unfortunately we only had time to explore one, Keswick. But there is so much to do in Keswick that we filled an entire three days of exploring and wanted even more time.

We arrived in Keswick in the afternoon after a couple hour bus ride. We got to ride on the top front row of a double decker so got some great views!

We found a great Airbnb right in downtown Keswick. After we dropped off our bags, we spent the first afternoon and evening exploring the many cute shops and restaurants of downtown Keswick. We went to lake road inn for happy hour and The Square Orange for dinner where we split some delicious tapas!

The next morning we set out for a hike that we were most excited for, Cat Bells! This hike offers such stunning views of Derwentwater and the surrounding countryside.

The hike is a total of about 3.5 miles. It is definitely a pretty steep hike up to the top and few scrambling rock sections! But overall it wasn’t too bad. There were so many amazing views along the entire trail which made for a good excuse to stop and take a break.

The views were pretty hard to beat! We even spotted a very enthusiastic dog that was happy to reach the summit!

On our way down from the summit we made our way to the shores of Derwentwater where we were supposed to catch a ferry ride across the lake to catch the bus back to town.

We missed the ferry by 5 minutes! And unfortunately the ferry only ran every hour. So we had two choices: wait for the ferry for another hour or walk an extra 1.5 miles around the lake back to catch our bus. We decided we might as walk as waiting for the ferry would take longer. We were at the time annoyed as we were pretty tired already from all of our uphill hiking. But as we made our way around the lake we were so happy we decided to walk as the views were incredible.

The woods surrounding the lake felt like we were in a fairytale. We were very happy we missed the ferry or else we would have missed out on this peaceful walk

We had to rush to make our bus on time as we wanted to stay on the lake trail even longer. But we made the bus on time! Once back in town we rewarded ourselves with some ice cream. Later that afternoon we decided to walk from town to Castlerigg stone circle, one of the oldest stone circles in Britain. It’s about a 1.5 mile walk to get to Castlerigg from downtown Keswick. As we made our way along the walk it started to drizzle and look very stormy.

We made it to Castlerigg but only with a couple of minutes to explore before it started to downpour! We got a brief view of the stones and surrounding mountains.

There was no place to take shelter by Castlerigg so we quickly started our trek back down to town taking shelter from the rain under the large trees. It didn’t help that we had to go to the bathroom the entire walk down too! We finally spotted a pub on the outskirts of town where we could wait out some of the rain and go to the bathroom. After that adventure we decided we needed to relax and get some dinner. We had a really good dinner at Fellpack. It is a little pricier but the food is very good. After dinner, the rain cleared and the sun came back out. We decided to head towards the lakeshore to get some evening sunset views of Derwentwater. Friars Crag is just a short walk from town center to get to the lakeshore.

The next morning we rented some bikes from Whinlatter bikes to explore more of the surrounding area. It was about 30 pounds to rent a mountain bike for a half day. We had spotted a rail trail near town that we wanted to check out. We started our ride from the shop and made our way to the paved bike trail that connects to the town of Threlkeld.

The rail trail runs parallel to a river most of the ride and drops off at Threlkeld after 6 miles. The views were amazing! we really were hoping to stop off at Threlkeld coffee shop for a break, but unfortunately it was closed the day we were there.

Instead of riding the same rail trail back, we decided to ride on the road towards Castlerigg. The road was light with traffic so it wasn’t bad for biking at all. Although there were some really steep sections which was very tough with heavy mountain bikes! we were wiped by the time we made it to Castlerigg. We wanted to come back to this spot since it rained on us yesterday. We got some more time to enjoy the views rain free.

This was definitely one of the most scenic bike rides we have ever done. And despite some of the challenging hills it was well worth it! It’s a great way to explore Keswick and some of the surrounding towns and sites.

Our last adventure in Keswick was the Walla Cragg hike,. The beginning of the hike meanders through a beautiful forest path full of ferns and foxgloves.

We made our way through the forest climbing higher until we made it to a clearing and another uphill trek towards the summit.

We spotted a lot of sheep on our way to the summit!

Once we reached the summit we were rewarded with sweeping views looking down onto Keswick’s city center. This was a very beautiful hike and we highly recommend it. However if you only have time for one hike while in Keswick, we would recommend Cat Bells first!

On our way back down the hike we stopped at the picturesque Ashness Bridge.

We were sad that we only had one morning left in Keswick. We spent our last morning enjoying some peaceful time by the water and getting a few last views of the beautiful lake and surrounding mountains