Early morning sunshine led the way down from Rannerdale Knotts, at the start of a blissful circuit of Crummock Water in mid-February. This walk ticked all the boxes, with the modest high of the Knotts offering stunning views of three lakes (Buttermere, Crummock Water and Loweswater), and…
People notice the arrival of winter in many ways. The clocks going back. The fading colours of autumn and trees losing their leaves. Going to work in the dark…
Autumnal Walk #3 (see last year’s October blogs for two more great walks to do in the autumn) borrows sections of the Cumbria Way for a great day out in the Little Langdale Valley. It started when we jumped off the #505 Stagecoach Cumbria bus to Coniston from Kendal at the top of Hawkshead Hill…
The English Lake District is all set to be “the place to be” again this spring and summer, with the warmer weather calling all Staycationers to our lake shores, water and mountains for swimming, sailing, walking, picnics and ice creams. At a time when we are still being encouraged to enjoy ourselves outside where possible,…
What better way to celebrate the easing of England’s third national lockdown than with an open-top bus ride from Keswick, bound for “England’s loveliest square mile” (Alfred Wainwright, The North Western Fells 1964)? This journey took us along the eastern flank of Derwentwater deep into the famed ‘jaws’ of the Borrowdale valley through the villages…
At eve: how softly then Doth Aira force, that torrent hoarse Speak from the woody glen! (William Wordsworth, The Somnambulist, 1833) The second of three autumnal meditations this year took us on a Hidden Literary Lakeland walk in search of the Ullswater Way. I often like to catch an Ullswater Steamer from Glenridding to…
This Hidden South Lakeland walk from Beetham to Milnthorpe is a walk of glorious contrasts, taking in bucolic hills, dappled woods, farmland, saltmarsh and the sea. It’s a treat as much for the feet on the ground, with stretches of limestone pavement underfoot, as it is for the head in the clouds, with blue September…
I recently shared a series of photographs taken by guests on my tours last summer on Instagram. It was both therapeutic as well as fun, revisiting the summer of 2019 at a time when I was unable to physically travel into the Lake District – at first, because of the UK national lockdown which started…
At last, the all clear for sustainable transport! When lockdown in the UK was eased in late June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged us to drive, walk or cycle if we couldn’t stay home. In the weeks that followed, the Lake District welcomed day-trippers, picnickers and more recently Staycationers flooding in by car and camper…
Huge thanks to Cumbria Chamber of Commerce for helping me start up my sustainable tourism business for Japanese visitors to the Lakes back in January 2018, and for the wonderful aftercare since. When the Chamber interviewed me for a case study published on June 3, I had the opportunity not just to review what the…