Ullswater's quieter fell country
Matterdale
Make Dockray your threshold for a waterfall, open fells, a historic parish church and the landscape behind Wordsworth's daffodils.
- Best for
- Waterfalls, fell walks and quiet history
- Give it
- A half day or an unhurried day
- Don't miss
- The footpath from Dockray to Aira Force
Photo: Lewis Clarke · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Come for the space between Ullswater and the northern fells
Matterdale rewards walkers who prefer a hamlet, a parish church and paths into the landscape to a conventional village centre.
Base the visit around Dockray: follow the signed path towards Aira Force, choose a fell or a section of the Ullswater Way, and finish at the parish's traditional free house.
Your picks, your pace
Make Matterdale yours
Choose a mood or build your own list. Your saved stops are an ordering aid, with a direct map route when you are ready.
Local signatures
3 placesGowbarrow Fell
A 481-metre fell above Aira Force, linked to the Wordsworths' 1802 encounter with the Ullswater daffodils.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Above Aira Force, Matterdale parish
Ullswater Way
A 20-mile circular route around Ullswater, with Dockray providing a start for walks towards Gowbarrow or Glenridding.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours for a chosen section
- Locality
- Around Ullswater, starting from Dockray
Great Mell Fell
An isolated, rounded 537-metre fell offering a short summit walk above Matterdale End.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Above Matterdale End, Matterdale parish
Food & drink
1 place
The Royal Hotel, Dockray
A traditional Lakeland free house with a changing blackboard menu, locally sourced dishes and ales from small Cumbrian breweries.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour
- Locality
- Dockray, Matterdale parish
Walks & outdoors
1 place
Aira Force
A 20-metre waterfall where Aira Beck drops through a wooded gorge towards Ullswater.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour 15 minutes
- Locality
- Aira Beck gorge, by Ullswater
History & heritage
1 place
Matterdale Church (All Saints)
A Grade II* parish church with origins in a chapel licensed in 1573 and surviving sixteenth-century roof timbers.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Matterdale parish
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On the map
Matterdale at a glance
Tap a marker to jump to its guide card.
Three ways to explore Matterdale
Signature outings
Walk into the waterfall gorge
Take the signposted footpath from Dockray towards the 20-metre fall on Aira Beck.
Pause at Matterdale's old church
Meet the parish church whose story reaches back to a chapel licensed in 1573.
Settle in at the Royal
End among a changing blackboard menu and ales from small Cumbrian breweries.
The village story
Matterdale, from the beck to the open fell
The unchanged guide moves from Dockray's old pub to Aira Force, the Wordsworth landscape, Matterdale's walking choices and the parish church before ending with the practical realities of a remote visit.
From Dockray to the falls
The Royal Hotel sits in Dockray, a scatter of houses on a minor road above the gorge of Aira Beck, and it has been serving drinks there for over five hundred years. It is a free house, CAMRA-listed, and the sort of place that keeps small Cumbrian breweries in business — Keswick, Tirril, Coniston and Cumbrian Legendary Ales all turn up on the taps depending on the week. The menu is a blackboard that changes with what's available: slow-braised lamb shanks, fresh Cumbrian trout, homemade shortcrust pies, and wild venison shot in Matterdale forest, which is about as short a supply chain as venison gets.
Across the road there's a signposted footpath to Aira Force. It's 1.7km away, which makes the pub the obvious start or finish to the walk, and plenty of Ullswater walkers treat it as exactly that.
Water, fell and Wordsworth
Aira Force is a twenty-metre waterfall on Aira Beck, and one of the most visited in the Lake District. The beck runs down through a wooded gorge toward Ullswater, and the National Trust keeps a car park and a café down at the lake shore. You can stand at the falls for a while and understand why people keep coming back to look at falling water.
Above the falls rises Gowbarrow Fell, 481 metres, and this is the one that matters. In April 1802, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy walked here from Eusemere near Pooley Bridge and found the lakeside daffodils. Dorothy wrote in her journal about "a long belt" of them. Two years later William used the memory to write "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," which is now one of the most celebrated poems in the language. The wild daffodils still flower at Gowbarrow every April, which is a rare case of a literary landmark keeping its side of the bargain.
Long ways, short climbs and an old church
Dockray is also a starting point for the Ullswater Way, a twenty-mile circular around the lake. You can go clockwise over Gowbarrow or anti-clockwise toward Glenridding. For something shorter and steeper, Great Mell Fell (537m) rises above Matterdale End as a rounded, isolated summit — a brief walk that pays out more than it asks.
Matterdale Church, dedicated to All Saints, is worth the detour. The parish grew out of a genuine grievance: in 1566 the residents petitioned the Bishop of Carlisle because Matterdale lay within Greystoke parish, and the journey for baptisms, marriages and funerals was simply too far. They got their chapel licensed in 1573. The building was thatched until 1848, when someone finally added a tower, and though the present stone church dates to 1881, the original sixteenth-century roof timbers are still up there holding the place together. It's Grade II* listed and one of the more isolated medieval parish churches in Cumbria.
Coming prepared, leaving with daffodils
Don't come expecting to buy anything. There are no shops in Matterdale or Dockray — the nearest are at Pooley Bridge or Penrith. There's no railway and no regular bus either, so you'll arrive by car, either from Penrith via Greystoke or up the minor fell roads from the Ullswater valley.
Then the daffodils, still coming up every April, doing what they were written about doing.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
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- File:Matterdale , Aira Force Waterfall - geograph.org.uk - 6278562.jpg — photograph by Lewis Clarke; Matterdale : Aira Force Waterfall by Lewis Clarke. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
- File:Watermillock Church.jpg — photograph by Rosser1954; Own work. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
- File:The Royal Hotel, Dockray - geograph.org.uk - 4066412.jpg — photograph by Russel Wills; The Royal Hotel, Dockray by Russel Wills. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.