The Lake District National Park

Bassenthwaite Lake - Lake District Cumbria The Lake District is Britain’s oldest national park, celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2011. It occupies the central region of the county of Cumbria in northwest England, contains almost all of the country’s major lakes and most of its highest mountains. The scenery is splendid, and the Lake District has been a popular tourist destination ever since popular tourism developed in the nineteenth century.

Lake District Directory
We are currently developing pages to help our site visitors both to explore the Lake District online and, hopefully, to plan a visit on the ground. Click here for our Lake District Directory. It is still incomplete but will be expanded during September (2011).

Below is a selection of items from our Around-England blog many of which relate to the work and visitor facilities of the National Park Authority.

Lake District Goings On

April 11, 2012

Recent news from around the Lake District includes a story in the Westmorland Gazette that the National Park Authority is now looking forward to further plans for the future of its Brockhole visitor centre by the shore of Windermere. Much has been done over the past year or so but we can look forward to [...]

Ospreys and Mountain Bikes in the Lake District

April 3, 2012

Great news for the osprey watchers of the Lake District. BBC News Cumbria reports A female osprey has been spotted in Cumbria at the start of the nesting season. …. The unidentified female was spotted on a nest near Keswick on Friday but it is not known if she will remain. Ospreys fly south to Africa during [...]

National Park Extensions – Consultation Ending

March 16, 2012

I spent this morning away from the usual Friday morning work on my web sites to put the finishing touches to a submission to the Secretary of State for the Environment and send it off by email. Today is the final day to say whether you approve or disapprove of the proposed enlargement of the [...]

Beatrix Potter in the Lake District

March 2, 2012

Beatrix Potter is one of the names that quickly comes to many people’s minds when they think of the Lake District. However, unlike William and Dorothy Wordsworth, she was not native Cumbrian. She was a London-born lady who fell in love with the Lake District early in life during holidays there with her family in [...]

Ullswater and Patterdale in the English Lake District

February 29, 2012

This past weekend my wife and I took a short trip by Ullswater, mostly in the car. I wasn’t very energetic but wanted to be outside so we drove from Appleby to Glenridding and up into Patterdale as far as the Brotherswater Inn. It wasn’t an especially good February day weatherwise, but the Lake District [...]

Westmorland and National Park Expansion

February 22, 2012

Google just now served me a link to an LDNPA document, dated today, discussing alternatives for the Park authority’s position on the extension of national park boundaries, and in particular the proposal from Natural England that substantial parts of Westmorland should be incorporated into the Yorkshire Dales National park. I see that the Park authority [...]

Lake District History and the Future

February 14, 2012

I was writing a piece on my “Lake District in Books” site when it occurred to me how much material I’d written there over recent months referring to the history of the region. This post is substantially a survey of things I’ve written there in the past, brought together for readers of the Around-England blog. [...]

Jeremy Irons reading Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” [Video]

December 15, 2011

This afternoon I was in the process of preparing another article on Wordsworth for after Christmas (Yes, occasionally I do manage to do things in advance!) when I came across a video of Jeremy Irons reading “Daffodils”. I hadn’t planned on putting up anything new today but am sure that many of my readers here [...]

Some Places to Visit in the Lake District

October 28, 2011

[Updated from a 2008 post]In addition to the lakes themselves there is a wide variety of things to do in the Lake District. There are places to visit ranging from the literary connections of Dove Cottage at Grasmere (home of the poet William Wordsworth) to the practicalities (although also with artistic potential) of the pencil [...]

More Pictures from Grasmere

August 29, 2011

Following my visit to Grasmere in the English Lake District last week I blogged about the 2011 Summer Exhibition of the Lake Artists Society. Here now are some more photos from that afternoon. The weather was varied. Overall it was a very pleasant afternoon, although from a photography point of view the light kept shifting [...]

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