Satterthwaite

The pub and the forest threshold

The Eagle's Head serves only beer brewed within twenty miles of its front door. It is the one pub in the Grizedale valley, a mile from the forest visitor centre, and it has decided that if a beer can't reach it from within twenty miles, it isn't going on the bar. The kitchen takes a similar line with the food. Much of the game comes from Grizedale itself, and the pies are handmade — a wild game and juniper pie among them, alongside a venison burger, a ribeye, and a Sunday roast with a choice of meats. There is a limited children's menu, which is honest of them.

The pub is the centre of things, because Satterthwaite is small and there isn't much else in the way of shops. What there is sits up the road at the Grizedale Forest visitor centre — a café, a shop, and bike hire, run by Forestry England.

Art and paths through Grizedale

You come here for the forest. Grizedale is 8,000 acres of managed woodland, and since 1977 the Grizedale Society has been placing sculptures in it. There are now over a hundred, by artists from around the world, dotted along the trails so that you round a corner and find one waiting. It was one of the first forest art projects anywhere. The society was founded by Bill Grant OBE, whose idea it was to put art where people would walk into it by accident.

The walking runs from gentle to purposeful. Carron Crag, at 314 metres, is the highest point in the forest and a short climb from the visitor centre, with the views you'd expect for the effort. There are mountain bike trails threaded through as well.

Old names and wartime stories

The name Grizedale means "valley of the pigs," which records the medieval woodland pig-farming that once went on here. The valley belonged to Furness Abbey. It also holds the last native red deer herd in the Lake District — the only one that has survived without being topped up from Scotland — along with roe deer, red squirrels, and otters.

There is a stranger chapter. Grizedale Hall, built in 1905 by Harold Brocklebank, became a prisoner of war camp for German officers during the Second World War. One of them escaped and walked all the way to the coast before he was recaptured, which tells you both something about his determination and something about the roads out.

Church, village and narrow lanes

All Saints' Church is medieval in origin and largely Victorian in what you actually see, a small church for a community scattered across the woods rather than gathered into a street.

Getting here takes a car. There is no railway and no regular bus. You come in from Hawkshead, four miles north, along the Grizedale road, or up from Ulverston by way of Haverthwaite, on lanes narrow enough that meeting another car becomes a small negotiation.

Between Esthwaite and Furness

Between Esthwaite Water to the north and the Furness country to the south, the village keeps to itself. The forest does most of the talking, and the pub does the rest.