Buttermere, Lake District

 

I’d heard that Buttermere was supposed to look lovely in the autumn, so we decided to head there a couple of weeks ago for a little break. I think we were slightly too early to see the autumn colours fully out, but instead, we had lovely sunny weather, which made for amazing reflections in the lake. You can find the above photograph in my Etsy shop.

The first day we were in Buttermere, we visited Scale Force, and the weather couldn’t have been more different. The tops of the fells were hidden by the clouds, as you can see in this post. 

The walk around Buttermere Lake took us just over 2 hours and is 4 1/2 miles long. We finished our walk and waited for the sunset (I love a sunset!) There was nobody else around as the moon appeared from behind one of the fells. It was really beautiful; the pictures in this post are some of my favourites that I’ve taken, and Buttermere has become one of my favourites in the Lakes. A couple of my favourite moonrise photographs can also be found in my Etsy shop.

Climbing Cat Bells

Cat Bells is a fell in the Lake District overlooking Derwentwater. At 451m, I‘ve climbed higher fells than Cat Bells, so I thought this would be easy. I was wrong. 

We walked from Manesty, not far from our hotel, to the foot of the fell and ascended the steep steps. Parking is limited at Cat Bells, and with it being one of the most popular fells in the Lake District, you want to get there early or walk from further away like we did. It was such a sunny day you could see for miles around from the top, over Derwentwater, towards Keswick and Bassenthwaite in the distance. Somebody had brought a cat up to the top of Cat Bells, so now I want to do the same, but I don’t think mine would appreciate it.

The descent was the hardest part. Most people seemed to be walking the other way, so they had to climb up the rock face, but arguably climbing down was worse, especially with an audience. I slipped a couple of times; the rocks are so smooth from where everyone has climbed them. Once you’re at the bottom, though, the walk back to the start is easy. The walk is about 4 miles in total.

Lake District Waterfalls

We got to see some of the best waterfalls in the Lake District on our recent trip. We drove past Moss Force on our way to Buttermere, there was a car park on the roadside, but we didn’t have time to stop. Sour Milk Gill (pictured above and below) flows into Buttermere from nearly 400m high, with a little bridge at the bottom to view it from.

About a mile and a half from the lake is Scale Force, the largest single-drop waterfall in the Lake District, which is also considered the highest waterfall in the Lakes. We had the waterfall to ourselves, meaning I could climb over the rocks for a better photo.

The final waterfall we saw was Lodore Falls, just a short walk from the National Trust car park at Derwentwater. 

Sizergh Castle

 

Sizergh Castle is a National Trust owned property near Kendal in the Lake District. The house is open from Thursday to Sunday, so we didn’t get to look inside when we visited, but there are lots of walks around the estate, an orchard, and pretty walled gardens to mooch around.

We stopped off at Sizergh Castle on the way home from the Lake District, so we didn’t have time to do the longer estate walks; you could easily spend a whole day here exploring.

Photos from the Lake District

 

I’ve written about each of these places on the blog before, but here are some photos I took the other week in the Lake District. I’d booked a trip away in September so it wouldn’t be too busy or warm. It ended up being one of the hottest days of the year, and Grasmere was incredibly busy, so we took a rowing boat out on the lake to escape the crowds. The photo above is available as a greetings card in my Etsy shop if you'd like to take a look.

We stopped at Skelwith Bridge to see the waterfall Skelwith Force and walked to Elterwater, which looked stunning. Finally, we watched the sunset over Lake Windermere.