Things to Do in Windermere and Bowness: A Local's Guide

Right, first things first, because this trips up more visitors than you'd think: Windermere and Bowness are two different places.

Windermere is the village up the hill, where the train comes in. Bowness is down by the water, about a mile south, where the boats are. Windermere is also the name of the lake, which is what causes the confusion in the first place. You can walk between the two in twenty minutes, mostly downhill on the way there and definitely uphill on the way back.

Between them, they're the busiest corner of the Lake District - and there's a reason for that. Here's how I'd actually spend a day here, having spent rather a lot of them.

Get out on the water

You cannot come to Bowness and not get on the lake. It's the whole point.

If you want to be in charge, Windermere Lake Cruises run self-drive motor boats and rowing boats straight from the promenade — an hour is enough for a poke about, two hours gets you properly up the lake towards Ambleside. Bring a waterproof. I say this every time and every time someone ignores me and comes back looking like a spaniel.

Down on Glebe Road, Bowness Bay Marina and Aquatic Quays both do hire too, and they're a slightly quieter starting point on a busy Saturday.

If you'd rather someone else did the steering, the scheduled cruises are genuinely lovely. The 45-minute round trip is the easy option; the Freedom of the Lake ticket lets you hop on and off all day, which is the better value if you fancy lunch in Ambleside.

Walk it off along the shore

You don't need boots and a map to get a good walk here.

Cockshott Point is the one I send everyone to. Head south from the promenade past the marina and you're on National Trust land within about ten minutes - open grass, shingle beaches, sheep, and a view straight across to the Langdale Pikes. It's flat, it's easy, and it's astonishingly quiet given it's five minutes from the busiest street in Bowness. Take a coffee. Sit down. It's better than whatever you were going to do instead.

Millerground is the other one, and it's the locals' pick. Head north out of Bowness along the shore path and you'll find woodland, a couple of little waterfalls, gravel beaches and jetties, and far fewer people. It's a favourite swimming spot in summer and an even better sunset spot in autumn. There's a car park if you'd rather not do the walk both ways.

If you want something with a bit more climb in it, we rounded up five easy Lake District walks with big views that won't eat your whole day.

Potter round the shops

Bowness's high street is small enough to do properly in an hour, which I think is its best feature.

The Hen House on Crag Brow is the one I always end up in - a genuinely lovely little boutique doing clothes, gifts, jewellery and, for reasons I've stopped questioning, an extremely good range of small woollen sheep. The women who run it are warm without being pushy, which in a tourist town is worth more than you'd think.

Beyond that it's the usual pleasing mix of outdoor shops, gift shops and places selling fudge you don't need and will buy anyway. Lean into it.

Coffee, and where to get it right

Bowness and Windermere are both quietly good for coffee now, which wasn't always true.

Homeground Coffee + Kitchen on Main Road in Windermere is the destination one. Brilliant coffee, brunch that people genuinely travel for — the waffles and the Homeground sarnie come up again and again — and a queue most weekends that tells you everything. Worth the wait, worth the walk up the hill.

ASAP Coffee have a small spot on Crescent Road in Windermere (and their original in Ambleside). Tiny, focused, seriously good espresso. If you're the sort of person who has opinions about pourover, go here.

Bryson's in Royal Square, Bowness, is the traditional option - a Cumbrian bakery with a takeaway counter downstairs and a tea room above. Get a Cornish pasty and eat it by the water like everyone else does. It's a rite of passage.

Chippy tea by the lake

There's a new one worth knowing about. Trenchers took over the old Boatman's Café site by the Glebe last spring - they've been doing multi-award-winning fish and chips in Whitby and Whitley Bay since the eighties, and Bowness is their first venture in Cumbria. Big portions, proper batter, and a dog-friendly area inside. Eat it looking at the lake, obviously.

Dinner, drinks and live music

Now the bit where we’re biased, and we’ll say so upfront.

The Easy Breeze is ours - Church Street, Bowness, ten years in as of this year. It started life as Auntie Val's Tea Room and became a restaurant, cocktail bar and live music venue, which is a sentence that still makes Mark laugh.

The food splits three ways. The street food menu is where the fun is - Asian sticky pork bao buns, salt and pepper chicken bowls, and the Easy Breeze Burger, which is our most-ordered dish by a distance and has been for years. The signature dishes are the ones to come to when you want to make an evening of it. And on Sundays from 12pm we do a proper roast - Lakeland lamb, sirloin, pork belly, the full Yorkshire pudding situation.

Drinks-wise, the spritz list is the one that keeps people sat down longer than they planned. If you're doing brunch, our bottomless brunch is on at weekends and gets booked up faster than we expect every single time.

Then there's the music. We've got three spaces - the main restaurant, the Show Bar upstairs and the Back Bar - and live music runs through the week, with the full listings on our live music page. It's the reason a lot of people's evening in Bowness accidentally becomes a night in Bowness.

Staying out past ten

Here's the honest truth about Bowness: it's a small town, and a lot of it winds down early.

We don't. The Show Bar keeps going after the kitchen closes, the DJs come on at the weekend, and there's usually a dance floor forming by the time most places have called it. It's not a nightclub and we'd never pretend it is - it's more that the tables get pushed back and everyone stays. Which is better.

Where to stay

Stay in Bowness rather than Windermere if you want to walk everywhere, and stay in Windermere if you want quiet and don't mind the hill.

For self-catering, we always point people towards West End Apartments - boutique apartments right in the middle of Bowness, a few minutes from the lake and about ninety seconds from our front door, which is either a recommendation or a warning depending on your plans. We've worked with them before and they look after people properly.

If you want more options, we've put together a full guide to where to stay in the Lake District covering everything from budget to properly indulgent.

A day, roughly

If you want it in order: coffee at Homeground, walk down the hill to Bowness, an hour on a hire boat, a wander round the shops, Cockshott Point for an hour with a pasty, then dinner and live music with us before the walk back up.

That's the day. It works in most weathers and all of it is within about a mile.

Come and find us on Church Street - book a table here, and we'll see you at the bar.