The Boot Inn sits at the end of a narrow-gauge railway line, which is a slightly grander way of saying that if you arrive by train, the pub is where the train stops. This is the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway, known locally as the La'al Ratty, and it has been running the seven miles up from the coast since 1875. The inn is the valley's main pub, and on most days it is full of walkers.
Inside there's a bar with a log fire, or a conservatory with views up the valley if the weather is doing something worth looking at. The kitchen runs steak and ale pie, fish and chips, Cumberland sausages, a Thai curry, and Sunday roasts served all day. There are six changing ales, mostly Robinsons with Cumbrian guests, and a sandwich menu at lunchtime. It is the sort of place designed around people who have been outside all day and intend to go back out tomorrow.
The rest of the village is a shop and a station café. Eskdale Stores handles the groceries and the post office. Dalegarth Station café sits at the railway terminus, which is convenient if you have just watched the train arrive and decided you would rather have tea than get on it.
Boot is at the head of Eskdale, one of the quietest valleys in the Lake District. The River Esk rises on the flanks of Scafell Pike and runs down through it. Scafell Pike stands to the north at 978 metres, Harter Fell to the south at 649, and the whole thing has the feel of a valley that most of the Lake District's crowds never quite reach.
The best short walk is to Stanley Ghyll Force, a 60-foot waterfall a mile and a half from the village, dropping into a deep, narrow gorge. Rhododendrons grow on the high ledges, which gives the place an oddly subtropical look for somewhere in west Cumbria. If you want the long version of everything, the full Eskdale approach to Scafell Pike is ten miles, the quietest and longest of the main routes up, following the river most of the way before the climb.
Getting here is part of the character. There is no bus. You come by the La'al Ratty, seasonally, or you drive — either along the coastal road from Ravenglass, or over Hardknott Pass from Ambleside, one of England's steepest roads at a 30 per cent gradient and no place for a caravan. Above the Eskdale end of the pass sits Hardknott Roman Fort, built between AD 120 and 138 and known to the Romans as Mediobogdum. The parade ground and the bath house walls are still standing. It was one of the most remote postings in Roman Britain, and looking at where it is, you can see why nobody has ever argued the point.
St Catherine's Church sits apart from the village, on the bank of the River Esk. A chapel was built here around 1125, and there was said to be a hermit's well on the site long before that. It is one of the most remote churches in England, which in a valley like this is a competitive field.
