A wide village green with stone houses set back behind it

Mosedale, Mungrisdale and Hesket Newmarket

Three small places on the quiet side of Blencathra — a summer shop in a Quaker meeting house, a pub owned by its village, and the fells they call Back o’ Skidda.

Three small places

Mosedale is a hamlet beneath Carrock Fell, about four miles off the A66 between Keswick and Penrith and a twenty-minute drive from the town. Through the summer the Quaker Meeting House opens as a shop selling cakes and crafts made by local people — the opening dates and times go up on the village noticeboard.

Mungrisdale is a small fellside village a couple of miles off the same road. It makes a base not only for the Lake District but for days out to Carlisle, Hadrian’s Wall, the Scottish borders and the Eden Valley.

Neither village is on a bus route into Keswick. Getting around has what services there are.

A red telephone box beside stone village houses on a quiet road

A pub owned by its village

Hesket Newmarket is an attractive village in the Caldbeck fells, mostly eighteenth-century houses clustered round a five-acre village green. There is a shop and tea room, and a pub.

The pub is owned by a co-operative of more than a hundred local people and supporters, and serves beer brewed by the Hesket Newmarket Brewery in the buildings behind it.

An old stone barn beside a walled lane with the fellside lost in mist behind

Up to Bowscale Tarn

This is close to the fells they call Back o’ Skidda — Blencathra, Bowscale, Great Calva, Carrock Fell and High Pike — which makes it popular with walkers and quiet with everyone else.

A lovely walk from Mosedale climbs to Bowscale Tarn, an isolated tarn under the fell, and comes back down through the valley.

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Other villages nearby