How Many Lakes Are in the Lake District? The Trick Question England Loves

Here is our favourite icebreaker on tour, and we shall spoil it immediately because it may be the single most-asked question we receive: how many lakes are there in the Lake District? The technically correct, pub-quiz-winning answer is one. Only one body of water in the entire Lake District has the word "lake" in its name – Bassenthwaite Lake, in the north – while all the others are officially meres and waters: Windermere, Ullswater, Derwentwater, Buttermere, Grasmere and their kin. The everyday answer, of course, is more generous: the district holds sixteen or so major lakes by common reckoning, plus hundreds of smaller mountain pools called tarns. Untangling the names is a small course in a thousand years of history – and a very good way to plan what to see. Here is the full answer, from a team that shows guests ten of them in a single day.

Why "Lake Windermere" makes locals smile

The district's watery vocabulary is a linguistic fossil bed. "Mere" is Old English for a lake or pool – so Windermere, Grasmere, Buttermere and Thirlmere already mean "Winander's lake", "the lake with the shore", and so on; saying "Lake Windermere" therefore politely says "Lake Winander's-lake", which is why guidebooks tease visitors about it (in practice everyone says it anyway, locals included, especially to distinguish the lake from Windermere town). "Water" names – Ullswater, Derwentwater, Coniston Water, Rydal Water – do the same job in plainer dress. "Tarn", from Old Norse, names the small pools left by glaciers in mountain hollows – the Vikings settled these valleys in the ninth and tenth centuries and their language still runs through every map: fell (mountain), beck (stream), gill (ravine), thwaite (clearing). Learn six Norse words and you can read the Lake District like a text – one of the small pleasures our guides enjoy handing over early in the day.

So how many are there really?

By the usual count, sixteen principal lakes, meres and waters – and each has a distinct personality worth knowing when you plan. Windermere is the largest lake in England, ten and a half miles of it, busy with boats and ringed by wooded shores and grand Victorian villas. Ullswater, the second largest, is many connoisseurs' choice for the most beautiful – a serpentine ribbon under high fells, famous for its steamers and for the daffodils that inspired Wordsworth's most celebrated poem. Wastwater, remote in the west, is England's deepest and most dramatic, its screes plunging straight into the water beneath the country's highest mountains. Derwentwater, the "Queen of the Lakes", floats its islands beneath Keswick and Catbells; Buttermere and Crummock Water share a valley so perfect it has drawn admirers since tourism began; Thirlmere is the reservoir with drowned villages beneath it; Grasmere and Rydal Water are the exquisite miniatures of the Wordsworth country; Coniston Water carries the Ruskin, Campbell and Swallows-and-Amazons stories; and quieter names – Esthwaite, Brothers Water, Loweswater, Ennerdale Water, Haweswater, Elter Water and Bassenthwaite itself – fill out the family. The tarns then number in the hundreds, from famous beauties like Tarn Hows and Blea Tarn to nameless pools on high ridges that only the sheep visit.

Can you see them all?

Not in one visit – and gloriously, you do not need to. The lakes cluster by valley, and a well-designed route can gather an astonishing harvest in a day: our flagship full-day scenic circuit collects ten lakes and four mountain passes between morning and evening – Windermere, Brothers Water, Ullswater (with a cruise), Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite views, Buttermere, Crummock Water, Thirlmere, Grasmere and Rydal Water – while our half-day routes manage eight, or pair Coniston Water with the celebrated tarns of the Langdale country. The National Park's own guide to the lakes and their facilities at lakedistrict.gov.uk is the authoritative planning reference; the National Trust cares for great stretches of the shorelines, which is why so many remain unspoilt.

A few lake superlatives for the notebook

For the trivia-minded (we cater enthusiastically to the trivia-minded): England's largest lake – Windermere; deepest – Wastwater, at around 260 feet; second largest and arguably loveliest – Ullswater, home to a rare fish called the skelly, a relic of the Ice Age; only true "Lake" – Bassenthwaite, which is also among the shallowest; highest concentration of literary associations per square yard – a fierce tie between Grasmere, Rydal Water and Derwentwater; and best sixty-second answer to "which lake should I see first?" – honestly, the one a good guide chooses for the day's weather and light, which is the kind of judgement no guidebook can print.

And the tarns? A word for the connoisseurs

Beyond the sixteen, the district's hundreds of tarns form a lifetime's collection of their own – and a few have earned national fame: Tarn Hows above Coniston, the Victorian-designed beauty that may be the most visited of all; Blea Tarn between the Langdale valleys, whose mirror of the Langdale Pikes is one of Lakeland's perfect pictures; Grisedale Tarn beneath Helvellyn, where legend sinks the crown of the last king of Cumberland; and Innominate Tarn on Haystacks, resting place of the great fell-walking writer Alfred Wainwright. Tarn-bagging is a gentler sport than peak-bagging and, on the right misty morning, an even more atmospheric one.

Collect them the enjoyable way

Lake-counting is, we cheerfully admit, one of the great simple pleasures of a scenic day here – guests keep tallies, and the tenth lake before dinner always gets a small cheer. Our small-group scenic tours from Windermere and Ambleside – maximum seven guests – are built precisely for the harvest: full days of ten lakes and four passes, focused half-days, winter routes and private options, all narrated by local guides who can name every mere, water and tarn on the horizon and tell you exactly why none of them is called a lake. One lake, sixteen lakes, or hundreds with the tarns thrown in: the Lake District's arithmetic is negotiable. Its beauty is not.

This article is part of our scenic Lake District guides collection – twenty in-depth guides researched and written by our local team. Browse the full library on our Travel Guide Library.