The Lake District in winter and how to avoid the crowds
Blea Tarn on the col between Little Langdale and Great Langdale
We’ve always loved the Lake District. A tiny part of England crammed full of gob-smacking scenery, stunning hiking, hills, fells, rivers and yes, you’ve got it, lakes.
It has picturesque, traditional white-washed and Lakeland stone villages with fantastic pubs, plus ridiculously narrow, winding lanes and countless tea rooms and restaurants serving delicious food of the very highest quality.
What’s not to love?
Well, I’ll tell you what’s not to love: the crowds.
At peak times during the year (summer school holidays, spring, autumn and Christmas - ie most of it), hordes of people descend on the Lake District for a weekend or week’s hiking, and/or to admire the scenery, buy outdoor gear, eat cake, or enjoy the many activities on offer for people of all ages.
This crowding, for us, reached its peak when lockdown ended during the coronavirus pandemic: we hastened up to the Lakes to enjoy our new-found freedom, to discover that everyone else in England (or so it seemed) had done the same.
Eating your sandwiches on top of a peak loses its magic when you can’t find a space to sit down, and your immersion in nature is marred by countless chattering/squabbling children and family groups. Well, it is for us anyway, maybe you love it!
The experience scarred us and we’d not returned to our beloved Lake District since.
Until January 2024. We came across a beautiful cottage on the National Trust Holidays website with views to die for; complete solitude seemed to be on offer, especially given it was the absolute bottom of the low season.
Reeled in by the magical photos of sunset across the lake, we booked a four-night stay and packed our bags with books and warm clothing. The cottage had a delightful lack of mod cons ie no WIFI, hairdryer, TV, microwave, nor indeed anything else that requires plugging in. The trip also coincided with us deciding to dramatically reduce our alcohol intake and vowing to henceforth eat healthily, so cartons of green tea replaced our usual bottles of red wine.
Looking forward to a retreat-like experience of spiritual and physical cleansing, we arrived at our cottage close to dusk. In torrential rain and high winds. That’s the other thing that’s not to love about the Lake District: the weather. It is one of the wettest regions in the UK and most of the annual rainfall seemed to fall during our stay. Other than one morning of glorious sunshine, it bucketed it down whilst the wind howled. Very cleansing indeed.
The Stickle Barn, Great Langdale
During our stay we visited the only National Trust pub in England; The Stickle Barn in the Great Langdale Valley link. We love the Langdale Valley and enjoyed a stroll under blue skies near Blea Tarn in the morning – anything more adventurous being off limits nowadays due to Draco’s bad arthritis.
Our short hike at Blea Tarn was beautiful and we looked forward to a fabulous (healthy, obviously) lunch, washed down by the only pint consumed during our stay. The Stickle Barn is very ‘National Trust’ – tasteful, simple and historic, with sublime views. The food however was a disappointment: served tepid initially and then, second time round, so salty it made our mouths sting. What a shame!
The pub is run for the National Trust by Lanty Slee Liquor Co. – named after the notorious Lanty Slee, who supplied the Lake District with his illicit liquor for over 50 years during the 19th century. He had many stills for distilling moonshine whisky hidden in local caves and quarries, and packed his horses’ hooves with wadding to silently transport his wares past the Excise men and over mountain passes at night.
Force Café, Ambleside
The quality of the food at the Stickle Barn came nowhere close to that at Force Café in Ambleside where we had lunch the next day – it was now raining again so we had little else to do. Force Café only opened in the summer of 2023 and boasts the best views of any Lake District café (quite a claim) The views are indeed stunning (or would be if they weren’t on this occasion shrouded in cloud and rain) and the café has a large terrace from which to enjoy them in good weather. The food was fantastic, the décor very contemporary and classy, and we’d definitely recommend Force Café.
Grasmere Gingerbread Shop
We also took the opportunity to pop into Sarah Nelson’s Grasmere Gingerbread Shop – at any other time of the year ‘popping in’ would be completely impossible, because the queue stretches down the street. But pop in we did – no queue whatsoever – and bought a pack of their amazing crumbly, spicy gingerbread wrapped in greaseproof paper (had got bored of healthy eating by then). The recipe is a closely guarded secret and the original from the 19th century is locked away in a bank vault. It’s a lovely story of humble beginnings, the triumph of something uniquely delicious and of family ownership.
So, would I prefer the Lake District in lovely weather but with crowds, or in rain and empty?
Despite my whingeing, definitely the latter. As someone (probably a wet weather clothing manufacturer) once said: ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear’. And at least I now know that mine needs re-proofing!
A potted history of the Langdale Valley
The rocks in the valley were formed by volcanic eruptions 440-500 million years ago.
During the ice age, the glacier at Langdale is believed to have been 750 metres wide and >300 metres thick.
When the ice age ended 10,000 years ago, the treeline was 700 metres above sea level, so only the top 150-200 metres of the highest fells were visible above the trees. Such a shame (in my opinion) that tree felling, land clearance and now sheep farming have resulted in those fells now being almost entirely devoid of trees – it would be wonderful if at least some areas could be re-wilded and nature could regenerate.
The first people to live in the Langdale valley were Neolithic, and the ‘Great Langdale axe factories’ were the largest producers of stone axes in Britain.
Romans built the first road through Little Langdale, leading from Galava fort in Ambleside to the fort on Hardnott Pass, which was stationed by the fourth cohort of Dalmations from modern-day Croatia and Albania. Mind blowing that they got this far on foot!
Langdale takes its name from the Old Norse for ‘long valley’. Before the Norse settled in this area in the 10th century, Welsh would have been the main language. It’s believed that these Viking settlers brought the iconic Herdwick sheep to the Lake District from Scandinavia.
After a slow start in the tourism stakes in the 18th century, Langdale began to attract mountaineers and rock climbers from far afield, and Wordsworth also played a key role as an early influencer, describing it as a ‘must see’ valley. And that remains the case!