Lake District Road Trip
After an amazing couple of road trips in 2022 we wanted to continue the good times, so after speaking with the amazing Latitude Family about where they’d like to visit, The Lake District was a firm favourite! With that in mind, we set about coming up with an amazing route, finding some awesome campsites and stringing together a host of great recommendations on things to do. The rest goes as follows…
It’s a Thursday evening in mid-May and our first campsite is just east of The Lakes, with our view (above) over to the mountains we’ll be driving through over the next 3 days. The first night sees everyone arriving at different times as they travel from different parts of the country. Some old faces from previous road trips, and new ones here all ready to start the journey in the morning.
Our first campsite was Holmescales Farm, 5 minutes off the M6. Easy to get to and a great starting location for the southern fells. A brief rain shower cleared and we got a great sunset behind the mountains in the distance.
Day One
Our first full day took us west and straight to Lake Windermere, England’s largest natural lake and the quaint town of Bowness-on-Windermere has plenty of shops & cafes. Plus it’s right on the lakeside. From here we navigated around the southern tip of the lake, or some of us took the time-saving car ferry across the lake!
Other popular stops throughout the day were the Claife Viewing Station, Tarn Hows, and a few even climbed the Old Man of Coniston mountain! The great thing is everyone is roughly following a similar route, so we kept crossing paths.
Our second night camping was at Turner Hall campsite, nestled at the base of a valley with amazing 360-degree views, zero signal and some great little camping zones spread throughout the site. This has become a firm favourite for many of those who were on the trip. Maybe even THE favourite campsite they’d ever been to!
A great day ended with beautiful weather and as the evening drew to a close a bunch of us roadtrippers gathered around for a catch-up and to get to know one another better.
Day Two
The second day took us north from Turner Hall, with another full day of locations to visit from caves and waterfalls to mountain passes and lakeside towns.
Everyone followed the road up (and down!) the Wrynose Pass, linking two valleys and taking us down towards Ambleside. Some of the must visit caves included Cathedral Cave & Rydal Cave.
Some of the road trippers even went in hunt of the Thirlmere infinity pool, before a stop off in Kendal for supplies and onto our final nights camping at Gill Head Farm.
This campsite was now in the north of the Lake District with amazing views towards Blencathra. More on that mountain on day three…
Day Three
Our final day day on the road together, and this one started early for a group of us! A sunrise hike up Blencathera had our alarms set for 3.45am for a 4am departure. Once we were on the move though everyone felt great as we could tell from the rising light that we’d be treated to some spectacular views at the top.
After getting back to camp a few hours later, it didn’t take us long to pack down and get back on the road. Day three was our shortest day so that everyone could head on their way back home, but we still had some great spots to visit including the Aira Force Waterfall on the edge of Ullswater.
From here we took a blast up the Kirkstone Pass, the Lake District’s highest mountain pass, where a group of us gathered in the clouds at the top to reminisce over the past few days & discuss where we might meet each other next.
From there it was a picturesque descent back down before the mountains soon vanished in everyone’s rearview mirrors.
An amazing trip was had, and we’d like to thank everyone who joined us. We’ll be back with another road trip soon!
See you on the road,
The Latitude Team
