Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Buttermere

Half the size of its neighbour, Crummock Water, Buttermere is a beautiful lake set in a dramatic landscape. To many connoisseurs of the Lake District landscape, this is the most splendid of them all. The walk around Buttermere opens up superb views of the eastern towers of Fleetwith Pike and the great fell wall made up of High Crag, High Stile, and Red Pike.

The Fish Inn at Buttermere is one of the oldest in Lakeland and also features in the oft-told tale of The Fair Maid of Buttermere. In the late 1790s the landlord's daughter, Mary Robinson, so enchanted a visiting travel writer by her stunning beauty that he sang her praises in his book A Fortnight's Ramble in the Lake District. A few years later another visitor, who claimed to be Colonel Hope, brother of the Earl of Hopetoun, was also smitten by the fair maid. He wooed her and ingratiated himself with her parents who had no objection to their daughter marrying into the aristocracy. In fact, the captain was an impostor by the name of John Hatfield. He was also a bigamist and an undischarged bankrupt. His exposure came about because the local correspondent for the London Sun, a certain Samuel Taylor Coleridge, considered the marriage as worthy of notice and wrote a piece about it. The real Colonel Hope was alerted and Hatfield was arrested, convicted and hanged. The most recent author to recount the tale is Melvyn Bragg in his The Maid of Buttermere (1987).

Standing above Buttermere village is the small, picturesque Church of St James where the special features of interest include an antique organ and a memorial to fellwalker and author Alfred Wainwright. It is placed near a window that looks out on his favourite place to walk, Haystacks, where his ashes were scattered.