The pub in Underbarrow is called The Black Labrador, and it is named after two dogs. The owners have two pet black labradors, and when they took the place over they renamed it — partly the dogs, partly to stop people confusing it with the Punch Bowl Inn in Crosthwaite next door, which is what this pub used to be called too. So the village lost a Punch Bowl and gained a Labrador, and the two of them now sit in neighbouring villages.
It is a 17th-century inn on the quiet back road between Kendal and Bowness-on-Windermere, with three separate areas including the traditional main bar and a semi-outdoor summer space. Dogs are, as you'd expect from the name, very welcome. It was CAMRA Pub of the Season in 2010.
The beer holds up. Hawkshead Bitter is the permanent ale, with two changing guests that have included Loweswater Gold, Collie Wobbles, Dent Aviator and Jennings Cumberland. The food is home-cooked with locally sourced ingredients: steak and ale pie, fish and chips, chicken, hake, a portobello mushroom with goat's cheese. Sticky toffee pudding and chocolate brownies to finish.
There are no shops. For those you drive the five miles east to Kendal, or over to Bowness-on-Windermere the other way.
The church is All Saints', built in 1869 on a site where people have worshipped for close to a thousand years. It stands beside Chapel Beck, which runs fast past the churchyard. The chalice inside dates from 1609. The original oil lamps still hang from the roof, and nobody has got round to converting them to electric.
The reason to be here, though, is above the village. Scout Scar is a limestone escarpment rising 235 metres directly over Underbarrow, and it is one of the classic short walks out of Kendal. From the top you get the Lakeland fells one way and Morecambe Bay the other.
At the southern summit there is a hexagonal stone shelter that everyone calls the Mushroom. It was built in 1912 by local effort as a memorial to King George V, and it holds a toposcope that names the fells laid out in front of you. It is a distinctive Kendal landmark, and it has been sheltering walkers from the same weather for over a century.
Below, on the valley floor, the walking flattens right out. The Lyth Valley is damson country, and the low-level paths thread through the orchards toward Crosthwaite. Cunswick Scar runs parallel to Scout Scar a little further off, less visited, if you want the escarpment views without the company.
Underbarrow sits in the Lyth Valley, five miles west of Kendal, with the scar above it to the east and the damson orchards below to the west. The Domesday surveyors don't seem to have singled it out — it lay within the old manor of Strickland Roger — so its record is quieter than most.
There is no railway and no regular bus. You get here by car, on the minor road from Kendal via Brigsteer, or up the Lyth Valley from Bowness. When the damsons blossom in spring, the whole valley floor goes white, and people drive out from Kendal just to look at it.
