Brown Jules - The Rough Guide to the Lake District

This Rough Guide is one of a newgeneration of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guaranteesyou make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it alsomakes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the fills you in on history, books, habitatsof the Lake District, climbing in the Lake District and a section on the life ofWilliam Wordsworth.

Detailed area maps feature in theguide chapters and are also listed in the dedicated map section, accessible fromthe table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on themaps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are alsothumbnails below more detailed maps in these cases, you can opt tozoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the fullmap. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewingenlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weveflagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmosphericcaf, a special restaurant with the "author pick" icon . You canselect your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarkingthe sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickestpossible access to everything youll need for your time away.

Theres nothing in England to match the splendour of the Lake District, a tight knot of romantic peaks, moors and yes, lakes up in Englands northwesternmost corner. For a nation reared on the tales of Beatrix Potter and Arthur Ransome, the pastoral images of a misty-eyed English past could hardly be more familiar: lush fields enclosed by dry-stone walls; warm, weatherbeaten and time-worn inns; shepherds gathering their flocks on green hillsides. Adventure-seekers, meanwhile, come to explore the countrys largest lakes and highest mountains, or to immerse themselves in full-on outdoor activities from mountain-biking to fell-walking and kayaking. Whatever attracts you to the countrys most famous, largest and most picturesque National Park, one visit wont be enough.

While rural tradition and the great outdoors loom large on any Lake District trip, its not all sheepdog trials, hiking boots, timewarp pubs and flowery B&Bs. For such a small region (36 miles from east to west), theres an astonishing number of glam places to stay and eat from boutique hotels to organic tearooms, gastropubs to yurt-filled campsites and youre often closer to an artisan bakery or microbrewery than a tractor and a field full of sheep. Farming, in fact, accounts for just ten percent of the National Parks working population, with up to to fifty percent of all jobs attributable in some way to tourism, rather than the more traditional occupations you might expect.

But wherever you stay, and whatever you do, the scenery certainly makes a play for your attention, whether its the glacial lakes and forested valleys or the steeply pitched mountains and their tumbling waterfalls. Theres nowhere else quite like it in Britain and even on the busiest of summer days its relatively easy to escape the crowds by climbing to the higher fells or exploring the more remote valleys.

The regions literary connections are also justly famous William Wordsworth and the Lake Poets feature, of course, but also many others, from John Ruskin to Norman Nicholson, whose houses, haunts and places of inspiration form the backbone of many a lakeland literary trail. Perhaps surprisingly for such a rural area, a long industrial history manifests itself in scattered mining works, scarred quarry sites, surviving mills and a couple of old railway lines Ravenglass to Eskdale, and Lakeside to Haverthwaite now converted to tourist use.

In the end though, for all the renowned literary sites, local museums or big-ticket family-friendly attractions, many visitors take home a more personal memory of their trip. A lakeside stroll and a pint in front of a roaring fire; valley panoramas from scenic peaks such as Cat Bells; or a nights star-gazing in spectacularly clear skies they all guarantee that one day youll be back for more in Englands most ruggedly lovely holiday region.

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