Whitewashed cottages and a hotel along the road through Portinscale

Portinscale

The closest village to Keswick — a mile out, on the shore of Derwentwater, and fifteen minutes from the town centre on foot over the suspension bridge.

A mile from town

Portinscale is the village closest to Keswick, just a mile away and adjacent to the shores of Derwentwater. It has a good choice of guest houses and self-catering, which makes it an easy base without being in the town.

On the doorstep are the starts of the popular walks up Catbells, Causey Pike and the Coledale Horseshoe, as well as the Newlands Round and the quieter walking in the Newlands valley itself. A short walk brings you to the landing stage at Nichol End, where you can join the Keswick launch and combine a walk with a boat.

By car it is a few minutes off the A66. The X4 and X5 stop on the A66 rather than coming into the village, and the seasonal 77 and 77A Honister Rambler passes through. Bus times and routes are on the getting here page.

Where Beatrix Potter spent her summers

Between 1885 and 1907 the Potter family took their summer holidays at Lingholm and Fawe Park, on the western shore of Derwentwater just beyond the village. Beatrix spent many hours there sketching the woods, the gardens and the landscape, and a good deal of it turned up later in the books.

The red squirrels at Lingholm — still there, in smaller numbers — are said to have given her Squirrel Nutkin. Owl Island is St Herbert’s Island out on the lake. The octagonal walled garden at Lingholm stands where the old kitchen garden was, and Potter credited it as the original of Mr McGregor’s garden in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Visit the Lingholm Kitchen

In and around the village

Two walkers crossing a suspension footbridge over the river with Skiddaw beyond

The bridge and the Howrahs

The pleasant way into Keswick on foot is over the suspension bridge across the river Greta and along the Howrahs footpath — a level walk of about fifteen minutes.

The main road to Cockermouth used to run through the village over a two-arched stone crossing known as the Long Bridge. Plans to replace it in 1911 were opposed, and it stood until flood damage in 1954 forced a temporary metal structure. When the bypass was built in the 1960s a new road bridge went in downstream, and the present suspension bridge was put up for pedestrians alone.

The fields it crosses are called the Howrahs after Edward Stephenson, a Governor of Bengal who lived in Calcutta — of which Howrah was a suburb — and came home wealthy to live out his days in the Governor’s House on Lake Road, giving this land its name.

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Other villages nearby