• Alston
• Allonby And Aspatria
• Ambleside And Troutbeck
• Appleby In Westmoreland
• Askam In Furness
• Barrow In Furness
• Bassenthwaite
• Borrowdale
• Bowness On Windermere
• Brough
• Buttermere
• Brampton
• Broughton In Furness
• Carlisle
• Cartmel
• Cleator Moor
• Cockermouth
• Coniston
• Dalston
• Dalton In Furness
• Dent
• Grange Over Sands
• Grasmere
• Greenodd
• Grizedale
• Hawkshead
• Kendal
• Keswick
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• Wasdale And Gosforth
• Kirkby Stephen
• Longtown
• Loweswater
• Maryport
• Melmerby
• Milnthorpe
• Nenthead
• Newby Bridge
• Orton
• Penrith
• Pooley Bridge
• Ravenglass And Eskdale
• Sedbergh
• Seascale
• Shap
• Silloth And Solway
• St Bees
• Skiddaw
• Staveley
• Tebay
• The Duddon Valley
• Threlkeld
• Ulverston
• Vale Of Lorton
• Wasdale
• Wetheral
• Whitehaven
• Wigton
• Windermere
• Workington
• Spa Hotels In Windermere The Lake District
• Hotels With Hot Tubs In Windermere
• Hot Tub Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Romantic Breaks In Windermere And The Lake District
• Themed Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Weekend Breaks In Windermere
• Windermere Attractions And Boat Trips
• Boutique Hotels And Accommodation In Windermere And The Lake District
• Windermere In The Rain
• One Way Ticket To Windermere Por Favor
• Horse Riding In The Lake District
• Walks In The Lake District
• Windermere Boutique Hotel Bedrooms
• Holiday Accommodation Wanted In The Lake District

The Old Lake District

Opposite the main car park in Ambleside is Charlotte Mason College, a large Victorian house with modern extensions. This was formerly Scale How, a private house where F W Faber worked as tutor from 1840 to 1842. Faber was well known in his day as a poet and at Scale How wrote Sir Lancelot and other now forgotten poems. The house must also have witnessed some painful heart searching's: Faber was an Anglican clergyman during his time here, but is remembered today mainly as 'Father Faber', a leading convert to the Catholic church, which he joined in 1845, inspired by the example of Newman.

The poet Fleur Adcock was Writer in Residence here in 1977-78 and Wrote below Loughrigg, an attractive sequence of poems about the area. Return to the road and go R (NW) along it. After 150yds, between Fairfield Hall and Haven Cottage, a short drive leads to The Knoll, a square stone house built by the journalist and novelist Harriet Martineau in 1846. Wordsworth, with whom she was on cautiously friendly terms, planted two pine trees in the garden and helped choose the inscription for the sundial, 'Come, Light! Visit me!' Martineau was a highly individual figure, well known locally for her atheism, her interest in mesmerism, her agricultural experiments (she ran a small model dairy farm from The Knoll and wrote a pamphlet on her methods) and her championing of poachers in Game Law Tales. Much of her writing (mainly popularizing essays and stories on social and economic themes) was done here; she contributed to Dickens's magazine Household Words and published a Complete Guide to the Lakes in 1854.

She had innumerable literary visitors. Among them were Charlotte Bronte, who stayed for a week in 1850, met the Arnold family at Loughrigg Holme and, according to Canon Rawnsley, allowed Miss Martineau to mesmerize her; and Emerson, who stayed in 1848. High Sweden Bridge and Scandale Tarn Serious walkers tend to neglect Ambleside, but away from the crowded centre there are wonderful walks which have the added interest of being the favorites of Victorian visitors, representing what the Lake District meant to educated tourists in the mid nineteenth century. As Eliza Lynn Linton wrote in 1864:

Many and beautiful are the walks about Ambleside: walks within a reasonable distance for any fair pedestrian, and which all but very fine ladies, or very delicate ones, may take without too much fatigue, and without risk or danger if they are moderately careful a statement which should not be taken too lightly, as she speaks elsewhere of 'a delicious day's walk of only twenty six miles in all'.

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