Caldbeck

Inn, river and northern fells

The Oddfellows Arms sits in the heart of the village and keeps 55-odd gins behind the bar, which is a lot of gin for somewhere this far from anywhere. Alongside them are five real ales, real fires in winter, and a menu the pub attributes to years of travelling: burgers, pasta, fish and chips, and a run of Mediterranean dishes, with vegetarian and gluten-free options throughout. It's a traditional Lakeland inn with rooms upstairs, and it won a 2023 LUX Life award for best dog-friendly pub. There's a dining room for people who'd rather eat without a dog nearby, and for people who arrived with one, the bar sells homemade dog treats under the name Doggy Deli. Front and rear beer gardens cover most weather.

Caldbeck is on the northern slopes of the Caldbeck Fells, at the very edge of the National Park, on what people who know the area call the quiet side. The River Caldew runs through it. The back of Skiddaw fills the skyline to the south, and the fells here — High Pike at 658 metres, Carrock Fell, Knott — are the rolling, empty kind that walkers mostly leave alone in favour of the busier valleys.

The Howk and Priests Mill

Directly behind the church, the river has cut a limestone gorge called the Howk. It's a short walk from the village, and the ruins of a Victorian bobbin mill sit down in the bottom of it. The Cumbria Way, which runs the length of the county, passes straight through.

The other thing to see is Priests Mill, a former corn mill that ground grain from 1702 until 1933. A rector of Caldbeck built it, and its waterwheel is described in various places as 42 feet across, one of the largest in England. It now holds craft workshops, a café, and a mining museum.

Water power and St Kentigern

The mill was not the only one. At different times the beck powered mills for fulling, corn-grinding, bobbin-making, flax-milling, paper-making and brewing. A village that once ran on water is now a quiet agricultural one, which is the usual direction these things go.

The church is St Kentigern's, also called St Mungo's, with a Norman core and twelfth-century origins. St Kentigern is said to have baptised local people here in the sixth century, at a spring on the riverbank still called St Mungo's Well.

John Peel, Mary Robinson and the cold stream

Two of the graves in the churchyard are worth finding. One belongs to John Peel, the huntsman who followed the Blencathra Foxhounds across these fells for 55 years and became the subject of "D'ye ken John Peel?", written by his friend John Woodcock Graves in 1829 and later set to a Lakeland tune. His grave is marked with hunting symbols. The other belongs to Mary Robinson, the Maid of Buttermere, who married a local farmer in 1807 and is buried here.

The name comes from the Old Norse keld bekk — cold stream.

The road to Caldbeck

There is no railway and no regular bus, which is part of the point of the place. You reach it by car: the B5299 from Carlisle, about 15 miles, or the Back o'Skidda road from Keswick, roughly 14 miles and single-track in stretches. Either way, you have to want to come, and the fells behind the village are quieter for it.