Windermere to Ambleside: 7 miles, 1115 feet of ascent

Let’s start with the matter of nomenclature: England’s Lake District does indeed have a lot of lakes, but you might just as fairly call it the Hill Country. When you take the train north from London, you can actually see the change from the fairly flat or very gently rolling Midlands to the more dramatic rumpled-bed landscape of the north, with the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District in the west. Right after Lancaster, the drama starts.

My rambling life really started here when my sister Tracy and I walked the Coast to Coast, which goes from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. It’s a landscape of little valleys cross-hatched with field-enclosing stone walls, speckled with sheep. The greens are rich and deep from the rains that roll in so regularly that the locals don’t seem to even notice what I might cal light rain.

And we will have rain; it’s in the forecast for every day of this first leg of my trip, four days to loop around Lake Windermere, a ten-mile-long lake at the very southern end of the Lake District.

In London, after landing at 6am, I spent the day wandering London, and my sister Karen, her husband Tim and I saw Conor McPherson’s great new play The Brightening Air (Irish family dysfunction with a dose of mythical magic thrown in) and I rounded out the evening the the lighter fair of the very good revival production of Oliver!. Sunday was a travel day, catching the train from London to Windermere, our starting point, where we met Tracy and her husband, also Tim. I always enjoy seeing my sisters get together, because it always ends up in Karen telling a funny story to Tracy, which gets Karen laughing so hard she cries and can barely finish the story, with Tarcay laughing along. It’s a good energy for traveling together.

We had a very nice dinner in an Italian place that clearly caters to the bustling tourist trade who come to Lake Windermere, many to walk one of the web of trails that crisscross the Lake District. Then back to the hotel for a very brief bit of reading (for me, the dry biography of Lady Anne Clifford that is my homework before walking Lady Anne’s Way) and off to bed.

After a restless night (I always get first day jitters on these trips) the morning arrived, looking cloudy and windy and cool, which is honestly perfect walking weather. The forecast claimed we would have no rain until 3pm. Let me refer you to my description above; the locals don’t count a bit of mist or five or ten minutes of water coming from the sky as rain per se. Plan accordingly.

Over breakfast, Tim Slevin, Karen’s Tim, figured out his travel plans (though he is with us for the trip, his bad ankle and back issues prevent him from doing the rambling, so every day is a new travel adventure for him figuring out how to get to the next place), and Tracy, her Tim, Karen and I psyched ourselves up for a good first day. We quickly made our way out of Windermere on a footpath leading to a noted scenic overlook.

The walking was good, going from paved footpath to unpaved trail and heading up assertively but not overwhelmingly. Along the way, we enjoyed the little treats of the trail, like a memorial plaque to the wealthy landowners who a century ago donated the land so the dramatic overlook was accessible to everyone.

And Orrest Head lived up to the hype, with spectacular views.

Now, seasoned readers of this blog will know the rule: reaching a high dramatic prospect means you are about to descend. And that’s what we did. Today’s hike takes us through several valleys, so the up and down is varied.

The weather remained cool all day, in the mid 50s F, with intermittent light rain. That meant regular pauses to add or subtract a layer as one or more of us got too warm or too cold. This actually makes for very pleasant walking, with built-in very short breaks.

Along the way, we saw Herdwick sheep, a breed pretty specific to this area of England. They are born black, and turn brown after a year or so, then go white. Their wool is coarser that other breeds, which makes them hardy enough to winter out in the elements (ideal for the shepherds who let them roam the hillsides of this landscape), but means that the wool can’t be used for clothes. It’s warm and useful for things like mattress stuffing and insulation. And the lambs are adorable.

We fell into a very happy rhythm, switching off who leads on the path, checking in regularly with each other to make sure everyone is doing okay. The first day or two walking with other people always seems to work this way (or at least with my family, the only people I’ve done long walks with). We’re all trying to make sure that everyone is having a good time, so there’s a lot of affirmation. And our varying levels of knowledge mean someone always has something to share about what we are seeing. I remain a confirmed idiot when it comes to identifying flowers, but we did see my old friend foxglove, the one flower Tracy and I could confidently identify on the Coast to Coast all those years ago. Now Tracy can fill in some of the gaps, because she has learned more plant names from planting her own garden.

The walking was demanding at times, but even the hardest uphills were manageable without too much gasping, and we didn’t mind even when the little ten-minute blasts of rain came more often as the day went on.

Because there are so many stone walls, meant to keep in sheep and cows, the walking always involves a mix of gates and stiles. A stile is just some set of steps over a wall, but they are wonderfully varied, some carefully crafted from huge blocks of stone built into the wall and others a bit more, shall we say, precarious?

The navigating on this walk is trickier than usual, because our “short break” walk is not following a single established trail with a name; it was cobbled together. So there isn’t a branded way marker that says “South Lake District Way” or something, That means our walking company (Contours, which I highly recommend) put together a typed route description that we have to stop and consult at the meetings of ways, or sometimes when we are in the middle of a field feeling uncertain. Mostly the descriptions match what we see, but sometimes there’s a bit of puzzling out whether “Go through two gates” counted the two gates that were on either side of a lane? That meant a few missteps along the way, but even when we went perhaps a quarter mile up the wrong way, we were in good spirits.

And as always there are little mysteries and surprises along the way to entertain.

We’d left Windermere a bit after 9am, and we kept up a pretty good pace considering all the elevation gain and loss. We made it to Ambleside, our destination, around 1pm, and reunited with Tim S., who had taken a ferry along the lake and then settled into a cafe in Ambleside to eat and read. Ambleside is definitely a tourist town with a very specific focus on outdoor activity. We saw probably half a dozen stores dedicated to outdoorsy clothes and gear (think micro-REI) in a really very small town. And the restaurant offerings are pretty good too. We ended up having a really delicious Indian meal. If you’re ever in Ambleside, let me recommend Ishaas Indian Eatery.

I’ll just close with a helpful image to convey the ups and downs of this walk. The chart below shows our whole walk. We did 11.5km today, tomorrow is 14km, Wednesday is 13km, an Thursday is 20km. But note the elevation changes. That’s what makes it invigorating. Yeah, let’s go with invigorating. If you look closely at the first 11km, you can see us climb to the first prospect at Orrest Head very early, then descend a bit, then climb, then descend dramatically, then another climb before our big long plunge to get back to lakeside level at Ambleside at 11km.

All in all, a very good start.