The house beer at the Watermill Inn is called Collie Wobbles, and it has won awards. So have most of the others, all of which have doggy-themed names, all of which are brewed a few feet from where you drink them. There's a viewing window in the main bar so you can watch it happen. On a good day there are up to eleven real ales on the hand pulls, which is a lot for a village this size, and the Windermere Brewing Company makes most of them on the premises.
The building was a wood-turning mill before it was a pub. It made bobbins, shuttles and cart wheels for the Lancashire cotton mills, part of the water-powered bobbin industry that once lined the Kent and Troutbeck valleys. Alan and Brian Coulthwaite converted it to a pub in 1987 and added the brewery, in a purpose-built extension, in 2006.
The kitchen leans into the beer. The steak and ale pie is made with ale brewed on site. Beyond that there's fish and chips, scampi, a good range of salads, vegetarian dishes and daily specials that the menu describes as unusual and imaginative. There's a dedicated gluten-free menu and a children's menu. Dogs are very welcome, which by this point should not surprise you.
Ings itself is small — a village strung along the A591 between Kendal and Windermere, two miles east of Windermere town. The River Gowan runs through it. The country here is low and wooded, sitting between the Kent Valley and the lake, with Garburn Pass and the higher fells rising away to the north.
There are no shops. For those you go west, to Staveley a mile off or Windermere two miles on.
St Anne's Church was rebuilt in 1743, endowed that year by Robert Holme. Before that the village was a modest settlement serving travellers on the Kendal–Windermere road, which is more or less what it still is, minus the horses.
The walking starts easily. A flat riverside path follows the Kent to Staveley, popular with cyclists as well as walkers. For something with a view, Scout Scar is reachable via Underbarrow — a limestone escarpment above Kendal that looks out toward the Lakeland fells one way and Morecambe Bay the other.
Getting here is straightforward. Windermere station is two miles west, on the branch line from Oxenholme, and regular buses run the A591 corridor. Most people arrive by car on the same road the church was built to serve.
It is the kind of place you could drive through in under a minute and not think about again. The reason to stop is behind the viewing window, watching a beer called Collie Wobbles come into being.
