Ambleside

Pints, waterfalls and paths from the door

The Golden Rule on Smithy Brow is a traditional pub centred on conversation and real ale. It serves no meals, although pork pies may occasionally be available. The building dates to around 1683. Inside are a real fire and historic rock-climbing photographs; there is no background music or games machine. Its Robinsons ales sometimes include Old Tom.

Ambleside sits north of Windermere in the Rothay valley, with the lake at Waterhead a walk from the town centre. Stock Ghyll drops over Stock Ghyll Force in woodland above Ambleside, then flows through town. A signposted circular path reaches viewing platforms beside the falls, including an access point to the upper platform.

Walks from Ambleside range from a short woodland circuit to the climb over Wansfell Pike towards Troutbeck. Loughrigg Fell offers another viewpoint above the surrounding valleys. A route to Jenkins Crag starts at Waterhead Pier and takes about one to two hours, with a steep, bumpy climb that can be slippery. The crag gives views across Windermere, but its exposed edge needs care.

The Fairfield Horseshoe rises above Ambleside for a longer fell day. From the town centre, shorter paths move from streets through woodland towards Troutbeck and open fellside.

Town-centre Ambleside

Back at street level, outdoor equipment shops are part of Ambleside's role as a walking base. Browse the town centre for boots, waterproofs and other kit before choosing a route into the surrounding fells.

Fred Holdsworth opened his bookshop in Central Buildings in 1956. It stocks one of nearly everything rather than piles of the same bestseller. Arthur Ransome browsed the shelves. So did Victoria Wood.

Ambleside has two Michelin-starred restaurants. At the Old Stamp House on Church Street, brothers Ryan and Craig Blackburn serve a tasting menu called "A Journey Around Cumbria". The restaurant occupies the cellars of the house where William Wordsworth worked as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland.

Lake Road Kitchen, the second star, arrived in 2024. James Cross worked at Noma in Copenhagen and Per Se in New York before opening here in 2014 — a decade of Nordic-influenced tasting menus with Lake District produce before the Michelin inspectors caught up. The interior is wooden planks and sheepskin throws. The menus change daily.

From town to Waterhead

For a different meal, Doi Intanon serves Thai food in the Old Market Hall and the Priest Hole occupies part of Kelsick Old Hall. Zeffirellis combines vegetarian dining with a cinema and jazz bar on Compston Road. Its sister restaurant Fellinis serves Mediterranean-inspired vegetarian food at a separate address on Church Street.

The Apple Pie, on Rydal Road, has been a bakery and café since 1975. Its café serves savoury pastries, while the bakery makes plain apple pie and a mixed spice and sultana version. La Liste has recognised it among the world's three thousand best pastry shops.

The Unicorn Inn on North Road is a Robinsons pub serving traditional pub food. Outside town at Barngates, the Drunken Duck offers dining in a country inn and appears in the Michelin Guide.

At Waterhead, Ambleside meets Windermere and boats board at the pier. The Red Cruise takes about 35 minutes between Ambleside and Bowness; its non-landing round trip from Bowness takes about 75 minutes. Nearby at Borrans Park, low walls mark Ambleside Roman Fort. An earlier timber fort was built around AD 90 and replaced by the stone fort under Hadrian. The fort's Roman name and the identity of its garrison remain uncertain. Excavations revealed the headquarters, commanding officer's house and granaries, whose remains can still be seen.

Bridge House and the Victorian spire

Ambleside was not recorded in the Domesday Book — William's surveyors did not get this far north. The town's documented life begins later. A market charter was granted in 1650, primarily for wool and yarn. The Salutation Hotel started as a tavern around the same time, in 1656. Keats stayed there. So did Tennyson, who worked on Morte d'Arthur during his visit.

Bridge House is an Ambleside landmark spanning Stock Beck. The Braithwaite family built it in the seventeenth century to reach land across the beck and store apples. It later served as a counting house, tea room, weaving shop, cobbler's and chair maker's premises, and even housed a family of eight. When it needed repair in the 1920s, local fundraisers, including Wordsworth's grandson and Beatrix Potter's husband, raised 1,244 pounds, eleven shillings and tenpence to buy it and donate it to the National Trust.

St Mary's Church was designed by George Gilbert Scott and built between 1850 and 1854, because the old parish church of St Anne could no longer cope with the tourists the railway was bringing. On the west wall there is a twenty-six-foot mural by Gordon Ransom, painted in 1944, depicting the Rushbearing — a ceremony held on the first Saturday in July in which rushes are carried through the town to the church floor. The mural contains sixty-two figures, all real Ambleside residents of the time. Ransom was at the Royal College of Art, which had been evacuated to Ambleside during the war.

Buses and living traditions

Harriet Martineau made her home in Ambleside. Educator Charlotte Mason later established the House of Education here, and the artist Kurt Schwitters spent his final years in the area. The Armitt Museum holds work by Schwitters alongside Beatrix Potter's scientific watercolours of fungi and objects from the Roman fort excavations.

The 555 bus runs from Keswick through Grasmere to Ambleside and on to Windermere, Kendal, and Lancaster. Windermere station, on the branch line from Oxenholme, is about 4.4 miles southeast of Ambleside in a straight line. If you are driving, the car parks fill early in summer.

Ambleside Sports brings wrestling, fell racing and other local competitions to the town. Sporting traditions in the area reach back to the seventeenth century, while the organised Ambleside Sports event began in 1886. Ambleside's Rushbearing is another longstanding community tradition.