In front of St Michael and All Angels Church stands a maypole, put up to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and now a listed structure in its own right. The church behind it is 16th century. The maypole is not, but it has outlasted the reason it went up and acquired protection of its own, which is more than most decorations manage.
The village sits at the foot of Wast Water, the deepest lake in England and the most dramatic in the Lake District, 79 metres deep and three miles long. In 2007 BBC viewers voted it Britain's Favourite View. The southern shore is walled by the Whin Rigg and Illgill Head scree slopes — the Screes — which pour down into the water in one continuous slide of broken rock. They are counted among the most spectacular landforms in the Lake District, and they are a short walk from the village.
The pub is the Strands Inn, a traditional Lakeland inn, and it makes its own beer. Strands Brewery started here in 2007; the first beer it produced was an amber bitter called Errmmm. The name comes from the Strands, the local word for the area around Nether Wasdale. The bar keeps a wide range of the brewery's own beers, and there is a distillery on the site as well. In 2016 the inn was named West Cumbria CAMRA Pub of the Year, and runner-up the year after.
The kitchen keeps things straightforward. Steak and ale pie, made with the brewery's own ale. Fish and chips. Lasagne. At lunch there are lighter options as well: hot and cold sandwiches, soups and salads. Food runs Monday to Saturday from noon to half past two and again from half past five to nine, and all day on Sundays.
There are no shops. For those you go to Gosforth or Ravenglass, which is the arrangement in most of the valleys out here and nobody seems to mind much.
What Nether Wasdale has instead is where it stands. It is the starting point for walks along Wast Water and for the long approach to Scafell Pike by way of Wasdale Head, at the far end of the lake four miles east. Buckbarrow, a smaller fell, gives good views back over the lower Wasdale valley without asking much of your legs. The valley is one of the most remote in the Lake District, and one of the most spectacular, and getting here reflects that: no railway, no regular bus. You come by car, either from Gosforth to the west along the single-track Wastwater road or in from Santon Bridge.
The road runs out not long after the village. Past Wasdale Head there is nothing but the fells, which is rather the point of coming.
