Arnside and the Lake District

Continue N following signs (about 4m) to Arnside, the quiet and amiable vestige of a minor Victorian seaside resort. This is a pleasant place to potter about; Arthur Ransome enthusiasts will want to follow the promenade w to its end, then take the causeway footpath a further 250yds for the abandoned sheds of Crossfield's Boatyard, where the original dinghy Swallow, which was owned by Ransome and helped inspire his Swallows and Amazons, was built.

luxury hotels in the lake district

From the promenade also Mr Cedric Robinson's guided walks set out across Morecambe Bay. For details of dates and times, contact any local Tourist Information Office. A walk across the Bay is an exhilarating experience of a strange and beautiful terrain: if you are bound for a walking holiday in the Lakes, why not enter the district in the traditional way, across the sands, and share something of the sublimity tasted by the earliest tourists? Near the promenade the Kent Viaduct, a graceless utilitarian object of squat brick piers and grey metalwork, crosses the estuary. It is the subject of Gordon Bottomley's melancholy poem 'The Viaduct' (1906): the monotonous procession of 'Piled trucks, tarpaulin mounds, and heavy vans' lumbering over the viaduct reminds Bottomley of an Imperial Roman Triumph. Levens, the Lyth Valley, Crosthwaite and Sizergh Continue N on B6385 to Milnthorpe, then go L (N) on A6 3m to Levens Hall (open Easter to end of October; closed Friday and Saturday; car park; admission charge), a fine country house whose core is a medieval pele tower, around which cluster gabled Tudor wings, some with enormous barrel like Lakeland chimneys.