After a very wet Thursday visiting Ambleside, Hawkshead, Lakeland store and Hawkshead brewery at Staveley (nice beer tapas in the cafe/bar) we arrived at the Waterhead hotel on the shore of Windermere.
We checked in the room, and after initially been given a twin room, we swapped to a double (the pictures are of the twin room)
The hotel was very nice, the standard rooms were quite large and had good facilities.
Again booked via KGB deals at £149 for 2 nights, well worth the money.
The hotel car park is located slightly below the hotel just lower than the level of the adjacent road. Parking may be a bit limited, though we managed places throughout our stay. There is a large pay and display behind the hotel (not sure if this is free if you stay and the hotel parking is full). Our room looked out onto this, but with a fell view in the distance, quite pleasant really. No doubt lake view rooms can be had at a premium price.
We elected to dine in the restaurant both nights. This is downstairs, with a large water feature dominating the open bar area. The bar had a good choice of drinks on draught and service was very good. We were seated in the bar allowing us to order drinks, view the menu, order and then be escorted to a table in the L-shaped restaurant. The food was good, but did not have all the fabulous flavours of the Daffodil restaurant food, and pricing was about the same. The service in the restaurant was very good though. The steak I had was nice enough but the sauce lacked flavour, similarly the lamb shank the following evening was fine, but the mint Jus sauce lacked flavour. The desserts were average (Sticky toffee pudding was the strangest we had eaten, and the chocolate fondant pudding was OK but nothing to rave about).
The breakfast was excellent though with many choices of both cold buffet/porridge and many hot items to order from a full cooked English to eggs benedict (which I had both mornings) and MANY other items.
Would recommend this hotel, but preferred the Daffodil as an overall experience, especially their restaurant food.
Friday 21st September
(Pathfinder Guide: Eastern Lakeland Walk#10 Little Mell Fell)
(5.3 miles, 3 hours)
Friday morning, and we checked out of the hotel to a brighter day.
We drove about 40 minutes north nearer to Penrith (which was near the A66 and the route home anyway). A short walk up Little Mell Fell was planned, and we eventually found a parking spot after driving along narrow lanes with little or no chance of anywhere to park, in the small hamlet of Lowthwaite.
This did mean a very short backtrack to the road by which we came, and this we followed for about half a mile or so, before finding the point through a field gate and then up along the track heading the direction we came for a short time.
The grassy track led us slowly up a twisting grassy sheep track getting a little steeper as it went on.
This eventually led out onto more open countryside and expanding views all around.
Passing through a gate at the end of barbed boundary fence we tracked up the grassy track to the summit of Little Mell Fell.
Little Mell Fell Summit (1657ft), and we enjoyed the views around on a crisp, fine, September morning.
Catching the views of Ullswater on the way down, straight across the top and follow the grassy track part way down. The track then dissapears and the way steepens significantly. We found the best was down was to go left and sideways following a narrow sheep track through gorse/fern that slowly wound its way down to the bottom.
We followed the road back to the car for about another mile or so, and remarked how the walk had been surpisingly good (compared with our ascent of Great Mell Fell) a couple of years ago, which had not been as pleasant or interesting.
Our Walk Score: 7/10
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