Seatoller

The Inn and the Pass

The Yew Tree is where Coast to Coast walkers stop to get their passports stamped, which tells you roughly how many of the people in Seatoller are passing through on foot. The pub was built in 1628, making it one of the oldest in Cumbria, and it reopened in 2025 after a community-led restoration described as a labour of love. It won the CAMRA Borrowdale Pub of the Year award the same year. The kitchen does traditional pub food; the building itself once put up German miners brought over to work the graphite seams, which is a longer story than most pubs can offer.

Seatoller is a hamlet at the head of Borrowdale, sitting at the foot of Honister Pass. This is the last settlement before the road climbs, and the road climbs seriously — the B5289 reaches gradients of one-in-four as it works its way up to the summit. The fellsides rise on both sides. There is no church here; the nearest are at Rosthwaite and Grange-in-Borrowdale, a short way back down the dale.

Slate Workings and Fell Paths

There is a small local museum in the hamlet, and half a mile up the road at the top of the pass is the Honister Slate Mine, the last working slate mine in England. Slate has been quarried at Honister since the 17th century, recorded from 1688, when it was carried out through Piel Harbour before there was any railway to help. The green Borrowdale slate came out of these fells and went to Sir Christopher Wren, who used it in his designs at Kensington Palace. The mine now runs underground tours and a set of Via Ferrata climbing routes bolted to the old workings, which is one way to reuse a hole in a mountain.

The walking is the main event. Dale Head, at 753 metres, sits directly above the hamlet and gives you the classic Borrowdale ridge. Haystacks — 597 metres, and Alfred Wainwright's favourite fell — is reached over Honister Pass and Gatesgarth; Wainwright's ashes were scattered on its summit, so you are walking to a place a man chose to be left. The Coast to Coast route he devised runs straight through Seatoller, which is why the Yew Tree keeps a stamp behind the bar.

Borrowdale's Ancient Landscape

Nearby are the Borrowdale Yews, ancient trees that Wordsworth wrote a poem about. They have been standing a good deal longer than anything else here.

Reaching the Head of Borrowdale

Getting in is a matter of the road or the bus. There is no railway. The 78/79 Borrowdale Rambler runs up from Keswick through the dale and terminates at Seatoller, though only in season — beyond here the buses stop and the pass takes over. By car you come up the B5289 from Keswick, or over the top from Buttermere if you fancy the one-in-four the other way round.

A Hamlet for Walkers

It is a small place, most of whose visitors have their boots on and somewhere to be. The Yew Tree waited nearly four hundred years for its restoration and got it in the end.