Bassenthwaite

An old inn and a village without shops

The Pheasant Inn sits at the foot of Sale Fell on the western shore of the lake, and for a good part of the nineteenth century it kept a boatman on the payroll to row guests out fishing. It has been an inn since 1778 and a building for five hundred years or so before that, when it was a farmhouse. John Peel — the Cumbrian huntsman, the one from "D'ye ken John Peel?" — drank here regularly.

The Inn Collection Group refurbished it in 2021. There are two dining rooms now, the Fell Restaurant for fine dining and the Bistro for something more relaxed, both run by the same head chef cooking from Lake District ingredients. The menu covers comforting pies, stacked burgers, fresh fish, and a Sunday roast — beef, pork or vegetarian — with roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables and rich gravy. It is CAMRA listed.

That accounts for most of the built village. There are no shops; the nearest are at Keswick, about five miles south. What Bassenthwaite has instead is water and a mountain.

Lake, mountain and St Bega's

The lake is four miles long and the most northerly of the major lakes. It is also the only one in the entire Lake District actually called a lake — everything else is a mere, a water, or a tarn. Skiddaw rises 931 metres straight up from the eastern shore, and the A591 follows the western one.

Away from all of that, out in a meadow on the shore, stands St Bega's. It is Grade I listed and about as isolated as a church can be. The current building is twelfth-century, with Norman stonework, but the site goes back to the tenth century, dedicated to St Bega, an Irish nun said to have arrived in Cumbria by sea.

Tennyson and the house by the shore

Tennyson stayed nearby and is said to have taken the lake, and this church, as the setting for scenes in Idylls of the King.

Where he stayed was Mirehouse, the seventeenth-century manor house on the shore. Wordsworth and Carlyle were guests too. It opens seasonally.

Ospreys and three ways to walk

The reason a lot of people come, though, is the ospreys. In 2001 a wild pair nested at the lake — the first successful osprey nesting in England for over 150 years — and fledged chicks the following summer. They have been the Bassenthwaite Ospreys ever since. You can watch them from marked viewpoints in Dodd Wood, or on CCTV from the Whinlatter Forest visitor centre, which is a strange but effective way to see a bird of prey.

The walking sorts itself into three. Sale Fell is a short climb straight up behind the Pheasant. Dodd Wood is the osprey woodland, laced with marked paths. And a lakeside path runs out to St Bega's, arriving at the church in its meadow.

Getting here and watching the nest

There is no railway. You come by car — the A591 from Keswick, or the A66 and then the A591 — and the buses along the corridor are the limited-rural sort, which in practice means bring the car.

When the ospreys are on the nest, the Dodd Wood viewpoints are where people go to watch them.