Lake District in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Lake District covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Lake District rewards a detour.

The Lake District route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 21 km as the crow flies, from Grasmere to Tarn Hows. ≈ 21 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Grasmere: Wordsworth's beloved village in a green bowl of fells by a small lake: the poets' graves at St Oswald's, the famous gingerbread shop, and some of the loveliest walking in the Lakes. 0.7 km to the next stop
2. Dove Cottage: The small former inn at Grasmere where Wordsworth lived from 1799 and wrote his greatest poetry, and where his sister Dorothy kept her celebrated journal; now a museum of the Romantics. 4.4 km to the next stop
3. Ambleside: A bustling walkers' town at the head of Windermere, famous for Bridge House, a tiny cottage perched on a single arch over a beck, with a Roman fort nearby. 8.2 km to the next stop
4. Windermere: England's largest natural lake, eleven miles of silver water between wooded fells, busy with cruise boats and ferries and the gentle, sociable starting point for any trip to the Lakes. 2.3 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Hill Top: Beatrix Potter's 17th-century farmhouse at Near Sawrey, bought with her book royalties and left to the National Trust; kept as she knew it, and the setting of several of her tales. 3.2 km to the next stop
2. Hawkshead: A car-free storybook village of whitewashed cottages and cobbled lanes between Windermere and Coniston, where Wordsworth went to school and a gallery shows Beatrix Potter's original illustrations. 2.4 km to the next stop
3. Tarn Hows: A sparkling, much-loved tarn ringed by conifers and fells between Coniston and Hawkshead, largely man-made in the 19th century and saved for the nation by Beatrix Potter.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 49 km as the crow flies, from Coniston Water to Ullswater. ≈ 49 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Coniston Water: A long, quiet lake beneath the Old Man of Coniston, where Donald Campbell died chasing a speed record, John Ruskin made his home at Brantwood, and a Victorian steam yacht still sails. 15 km to the next stop
2. Scafell Pike: The highest mountain in England at 978 metres, a wild dome of grey boulders in the western Lakes whose summit was given to the nation as a First World War memorial. 15 km to the next stop
3. Derwentwater: A broad, shallow, island-strewn lake just south of Keswick, ringed by fells and the jaws of Borrowdale, with launches, the classic view from Friar's Crag, and Catbells above its shore. 2.1 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Keswick: The lively market-town capital of the northern Lakes, below Skiddaw by Derwentwater, with its island Moot Hall, a pencil museum, and a hundred fell walks from the door. 2.5 km to the next stop
2. Castlerigg Stone Circle: A roughly 5,000-year-old Neolithic stone circle on a plateau near Keswick, ringed by high fells, one of the earliest in Britain and set in perhaps the finest landscape of any prehistoric site. 15 km to the next stop
3. Ullswater: Often called the loveliest lake, a graceful zig-zag through the fells where Wordsworth's daffodils grew, with Victorian 'Steamers', the Aira Force waterfall, and Helvellyn rising above.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: October 8, 2026

Full Lake District guide and all stops →