The terrace at the Brackenrigg Inn looks down six acres of meadow to Ullswater, and on a warm afternoon it does most of the work of selling the place. It is an 18th-century coaching inn, once independent, now part of the Another Place group that runs the lakeside hotel five minutes' walk downhill. The kitchen cooks Cumberland sausage, locally caught trout, a cheese and onion pie, and a Sunday roast that comes as beef, turkey, pork or nut roast with all the trimmings. Finish with sticky toffee pudding, which in this part of Cumbria is close to compulsory.
The beer is brewed on site — Brackenrigg Bitter and Ullswater Blonde — and there is a long-term plan to reestablish the microbrewery properly in the converted stable block. On Friday evenings from half past eight there is live acoustic music. Dogs are welcome. There are seven en-suite rooms if you decide the terrace is worth staying for.
That is more or less the village. Watermillock is not a village in the sense of a street with houses on it; it is a scattered community strung along the western shore of Ullswater, three miles south of Pooley Bridge. There is no through road on this stretch and no railway, and no regular bus. You arrive by the A592, which runs the western shore between Pooley Bridge and Glenridding, or, in season, by Ullswater Steamer, which stops near Watermillock on request — there is no permanent pier here, so you flag it down.
The compensation for all this quiet is the lake and the fells. The shore path is the flattest and most accessible walk on Ullswater, running along the water toward Glenridding one way and Pooley Bridge the other. It forms part of the Ullswater Way, the 20-mile circular that loops the whole lake and passes through the village. For something with more effort in it, Great Mell Fell rises to 537 metres just inland — a rounded, isolated hill, a short climb, and a panorama at the top that repays it.
The open fells of Gowbarrow and Great Mell dominate everything you can see. The lakeshore itself is largely undeveloped, which is unusual for a lake this famous.
All Saints' Church serves the lakeshore community, its parishioners spread thin along the water. Its origins are 12th-century, when Watermillock lay within the large medieval parish of Greystoke, though the building you see now is mostly Victorian. There is no Domesday entry of its own; the place was simply part of Greystoke's considerable holdings.
For shopping you go elsewhere — Pooley Bridge or Penrith — because there is nothing here to shop in, and that is rather the point. The most significant thing to happen to Watermillock in recent memory was the opening of Another Place in 2017, on the old Rampsbeck Hotel site, one of the larger arrivals in Cumbrian hospitality in years.
But most days nothing happens at all, which is why people come. You sit on the terrace, the meadow runs down to the water, and a steamer works its way up the lake toward Glenridding without hurrying.
