Around Some Lakes

Among our selection of walks for you to try we've got walks around quite a few of the lakes¹ of the Lake District. Some of the lakes are a bit big to do a circuit as a day walk. The Ullswater Way for example is twenty miles. But there are some shorter walks. Here's a few.

Derwent Water

Derwent Water at the northern end of Lakeland is always a popular destination for walkers especially with Keswick at the northern end and Catbells on the west side, indeed our walk up Catbells is one of our most commonly downloaded.

Catbells and Maiden Moor across Derwent Water

Today however we're looking at our walk Around Derwent Water. This walk takes you clockwise: for the simple reason that sunshine on the mountains opposite always helps to make them look their best. This is reasonably long walk at 15.3km or 9.5 miles but there's very little ascent so it's not that hard an undertaking. And if you do decide part way around that you've had enough then you can wander down to one of the piers scattered around the lake and pick up one of the launches back to Keswick.

Buttermere

For a shorter walk why not try our walk Around Buttermere? It's only 7.5km or 4.7 miles and the views are simply superb in all directions. Ideal for a summer evening, or lazy afternoon stroll.

Buttermere

Grasmere and Rydal Water

These two lakes lie very closely together so you can either walk around Grasmere (6.0km or 3.7 miles) or go for a longer walk around Grasmere and Rydal Water (9.0km or 5.6 miles)².

Grasmere

Both start from Grasmere village at the northern end of the lake and pass the Wordsworth Trust Shop and then Dove Cottage where William lived for eight years.

Rydal Water from the Coffin Road

You also follow a short section of the old 'coffin road' from Rydal in the days when St Oswald's in Grasmere was the only parish church with a graveyard.

Ennerdale Water

The walks above are all around some of the most popular lakes so in nice weather you will meet quite a lot of other walkers. If you fancy somewhere quieter then head west for our circuit of Ennerdale Water (11.7km or 7.3 miles).

Ennerdale Water

Situated at the entrance to the valley of Ennerdale it is surrounded by rugged hills and forestry plantations. One of the more remote locations in the Lakes, there is a long term project to keep and enhance this 'wild' place.

1. It would be remiss of us, in a post talking about walking around the lakes, if we didn't raise the issue that arguably there's only one "lake" in the Lake District, that's Bassenthwaite Lake. All the rest are "waters" e.g. Derwent Water, or "meres", e.g. Windermere.
2. By the way the footbridge we normally use to take people over the River Rothay in step 3 of the Grasmere and Rydal Water walk is currently closed due to damage caused by Storm Desmond in December 2015 which means taking a 0.5km (0.3 miles) diversion. This is explained in the walk description.

Tagged: walks

You can comment on this post in our forum.