The hustle and bustle of the market town of Kendal and of Lake Windermere, on the main A591, are only 20 minutes drive away.
The central Lakes with their numerous tourist attractions are busy and crowded nowadays, and are explored best from a quiet fringe valley like ours. But you are really here to explore Kentmere itself; it's a rambler's paradise, a beautiful, unspoilt, steep-sided dale with woods, fields, lanes, a scattering of traditional lakeland farms and dwellings, the river Kent, a "main" road that peters out a mile above Maggs Howe, and of course the fells with their walks so favoured by Wainwright.
You'll need six fine hours to enjoy the Kentmere Horseshoe with its magnificent peaks, the Yoke, Ill Bell, Froswick, High Street, Harter Fell and Kentmere Pike; or cut across one of the passes, into the adjacent valleys of Troutbeck, Patterdale and Longsleddale; or keep to the valley's gentler slopes, and look for buzzards, wheateaters and wildflowers along lanes to Kentmere Reservoir, Skeggles Water or Williamson's Monument.
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