Why mid-winter might be the best time to visit the Lake District

Summer in the Lake District is hot (occasionally), congested (comparatively), and expensive (objectively). Its lush beauty vastly outweighs these cavils, of course, but I still wondered whether the off-season might have more going for it than its cheap room rates and empty town centres might indicate. 

Thus to Keswick in January. It’s a small market town that lies a boulder’s roll from the slopes of Skiddaw. It’s very much a touristy staging post for the fells around it, but unambiguously Lakes-ish. Think wet-look slate, 10,000 outdoor gear shops, and a 360-degree horizon so dominated by hills that you feel like you’re in an enormous terraformed stadium. 

Now that the Lakes have joined sites including the Grand Canyon, Machu Picchu and Easter Island in acquiring Unesco World Heritage status, I suspect off-season chumps like me will become increasingly numerous here.

To my fellow naïfs I say: bring a proper coat! Bring proper walking boots! Failing this basic adherence to maternal common sense, at least buy the stuff when you’re here, because there are good January discounts on the outdoor gear. Lord knows why. The equipment isn’t any less functional than it was in December, which led me to wonder whether the realm of outdoor gear is in fact a world of ruthlessly fast-moving fashion. Was Mountain Warehouse the new Blacks? Fretful and ignorant, I nevertheless donned my new if oh-so-2017 boots, and went for a hike.

Five hours later, I returned, sodden to the marrow, which was simultaneously (i) not in keeping with the morning’s weather forecast; (ii) entirely predictable. In a glass-half-full kind of way – or even in a glass-overflowing-with-torrential-rain kind of way, a glass borne aloft on swelling tides of flood water – one benefit of being extremely cold and wet is that any amount of warmth and shelter becomes extraordinarily welcome. By this I mean not a mote of disparagement towards the new and lovely Lingholm Kitchen and Walled Garden. I just mean that they could have built a wattle-and-daub shack heated by a single candle and I’d still have been deliriously thankful. 

My quest for shelter continued after the short drive back into town. I visited the Keswick Museum, whose best exhibit is perhaps the Musical Stones of Skiddaw. What sounds like a lame local tribute band to Mick Jagger and co is in fact a huge xylophone made from particularly sonorous strips of hornfels, a tough sort of rock that was mined nearby. Its father-and-sons creators took it on a tour of Europe in the 19th century, thus setting the continent up for an almighty surprise when rock music arrived much later.

There’s another museum nearby: the Derwent Pencil Museum. Now I must confess that I was not expecting high-octane thrills from this one. But how wrong I was! By the time you leave you will be bursting with interesting pencil facts. Did you know… that this used to be the only place in the world where graphite was mined? Did you know… that this made graphite more expensive by weight than gold? Did you know… that within 25 years of the Borrowdale mine being opened, its graphite was being used in Italy by Michelangelo’s students?

I, for one, had not known any of these things. I left with the above facts and one more: Keswick is worth visiting at any time of year. 

Daytripper | More from our series on UK days out

Six good reasons to visit Keswick

1. The coffee shop

Modern, airy, and adjacent to a brilliant bakery, the Lingholm Kitchen and Walled Garden provided welcome respite from the rain. The walled garden contains an outside gallery of Beatrix Potter’s work, this being the site where she was inspired to write The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

2. The theatre

The Theatre by the Lake couldn’t be better located. Its busy 2018 season schedule includes Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense and Alan Bennett’s Single Spies.

Why the Lake District is the most beautiful place in Britain

3. The restaurant

We enjoyed some elegant seasonal food at Merienda (10 Main St). Four miles outside Keswick is the Cottage in the Wood, a restaurant with a gorgeous view and garlanded cooking.

4. The museum (I)

Keswick Museum, the home of the Musical Stones, is open 10am-4pm each day and offers family tickets for £10. Its current exhibition is HERstory of Keswick, which documents the contributions women have made to the town both historically and in the present day.

5. The museum (II)

Centuries of pencil history are celebrated at the Derwent Pencil Museum. Open 9.30am-5pm; two adults and two children enter for £14.50. 

6. The stone circle

Find Castlerigg Stone Circle a little way outside town. It is an ancient ring of rocks whose purpose is forgotten but whose situation, on a plateau at the centre of a panorama of hills, is spectacular.