Windermere: A Local Guide to England's Largest Lake

Most visits to the Lake District begin here, and there are worse ways to begin: Windermere, England's largest lake, is ten and a half miles of island-scattered water running north to south through the district's gentler southern country, with the high fells rising theatrically at its head. It carries the district's busiest boats, its most famous viewpoints and two of its liveliest little towns – and because it is also our home water, where our tours begin and end, we know both its postcard face and its quiet corners. Here is the local guide to Windermere: what it is, what to do on and around it, and how to see past the bustle to the beauty.

The essential facts, quickly

Windermere is a ribbon lake, gouged by Ice Age glaciers: about ten and a half miles long, roughly a mile across at its widest, and some 219 feet deep – England's largest natural lake by a comfortable margin, though the name teases pedants everywhere, since "mere" already means lake (the town of Windermere, confusingly, sits a mile uphill from the water; the main lakeside town is Bowness-on-Windermere). A scatter of islands rides its middle reach, the largest of which, Belle Isle, is privately owned and crowned with an eccentric eighteenth-century round house. The lake has been the district's front door since the railway arrived from Kendal in 1847 – the line Wordsworth famously protested – delivering visitors to its shore ever since, our own guests included: Windermere's station and hotels make it the natural base for touring, which is precisely why our scenic departures start here and in neighbouring Ambleside.

On the water: cruises, steamers and eighteen miles of shoreline

Windermere is best introduced from itself. The lake's cruise boats – successors to a Victorian steamer fleet, some of the vessels proudly historic – ply between Lakeside at the southern tip, Bowness in the middle and Waterhead (for Ambleside) at the head, and a simple one-way sailing delivers the whole geography: wooded islands, yacht moorings, grand villa gardens running down to boathouses, and ahead, growing all the way, the mountain wall of the central fells – the Langdale Pikes and their neighbours – that tells you exactly where the drama lives. Rowing boats and kayaks are readily hired at Bowness for the independently minded; swimmers (wet-suited, mostly) share the bays on summer mornings; and the lake hosts one of open-water swimming's great events each year. However you take to it, being afloat resets your sense of the district's scale: the shores look composed, the fells enormous, and the crowds simply vanish.

Around the shore: Bowness, Ambleside and the viewpoints

Bowness-on-Windermere is the lake's cheerful capital – promenade, piers, swans, ice cream, and a genuine medieval church behind the waterfront bustle – unashamedly a resort, and fun in exactly that spirit. Ambleside, at the lake head, is the handsome working town of the central Lakes: stone-built, café-rich, mountain-ringed, with the famous tiny Bridge House perched over its beck – and it is the other cradle of our touring day. Between and around them, the viewpoints stack up: Orrest Head, the modest hill above Windermere town whose panorama famously converted the young Alfred Wainwright to a lifetime of fell-worship, is a twenty-minute walk to one of the great first sights of the district; Queen Adelaide's Hill above Bowness gives the classic mid-lake prospect for minimal effort; and the road down the quieter western shore – ferry-crossed, wooded, threaded with National Trust land – shows you the un-touristed Windermere most visitors never meet. The Trust's shoreline holdings (nationaltrust.org.uk) include Wray Castle, the Victorian fantasy fortress where young Beatrix Potter's love affair with the Lakes began – a fine target for a western-shore afternoon.

The lake in the stories

Windermere is thoroughly storied water. Beatrix Potter holidayed here, campaigned to save its shoreline meadows from development, and set scenes in its country; Arthur Ransome, whose Swallows and Amazons is dear to generations, drew on the lake and its islands as much as on Coniston; the National Park's story effectively begins with the 1840s railway battle over this shore; and in living memory Windermere hosted record-breaking speed attempts and even, wartime, flying-boat building – a reminder that England's prettiest lake has always been a working one. Our guides carry a full anthology; the lake supplies illustrations on demand.

Managing the honeypot

Honest local counsel: Bowness at a summer weekend is exuberantly busy, and the A591 along the eastern shore carries most of the district's arriving traffic. The remedies are simple and reliable – mornings and evenings on the waterfront, the western shore or the water itself in the middle of the day, and, above all, using Windermere as your comfortable base while spending your daylight in the wilder country beyond: the lake is the district's threshold, not its summit. Planning references for boats, paths and parking sit with the National Park at lakedistrict.gov.uk.

Windermere through the seasons

The lake keeps a full calendar. Spring lines the shore gardens and western woods with blossom and bluebells; summer fills the water with sails and the promenades with holiday cheer; autumn is the connoisseur's pick, when the wooded shores turn copper and gold and reflect themselves for photographers on still mornings; and winter empties the piers, dusts the distant Langdale Pikes with snow, and gives the lake back to residents, swans and the hardier visitors – who get the grandest views of the year in exchange for a coat. There is no off season on this water, only changes of programme.

The first lake of ten

On our touring days, Windermere plays exactly the role geography assigned it: the graceful overture. Our small-group scenic tours depart from Windermere and Ambleside with a maximum of seven guests, and within minutes of leaving its shore the lake is performing below us from the climbs – the first tick on the day's tally as we head for Kirkstone Pass, Ullswater and the wilder north-west, ten lakes and four mountain passes in a single flowing day. See Windermere first, by all means – everyone rightly does. Then let us show you what it is the front door to.

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.