Aira Force and Gowbarrow

Aira Force drops around 20 metres through a narrow, wooded ravine about a kilometre above the point where Aira Beck enters Ullswater, and the National Trust describes the site as an eighteenth-century pleasure ground. The Trust bought the 750-acre Gowbarrow Park in 1906. It sits on the northern shore of Ullswater near Dockray, with its own car park, café and toilets at the National Trust site.

The core walk from the car park to the falls and back is short and stays on maintained paths, and it is short enough for children or for an afternoon with little time to spare. Walkers who want more can continue up onto Gowbarrow Fell itself, a modest 481m Wainwright, on rougher, boggier paths with views over Ullswater; that extension turns an easy half-hour into a half-day and is a different proposition entirely from the waterfall walk on its own. The National Trust’s own Aira Force and Gowbarrow trail, the round the figures on this page describe, is 7.2km, graded moderate, and given as one and a half to three hours. Without a car, the Stagecoach 508 from Penrith stops at Aira Force and the 509 runs from Keswick, and Ullswater Steamers sail to Aira Force from Glenridding. The Trust asks that dogs stay on leads at all times during a visit.

William Wordsworth is thought to have been inspired to write “Daffodils” after seeing them growing wild with his sister Dorothy on the Ullswater shore near Glencoyne Bay, which the Trust puts 2.4km from Aira Force on foot.

This suits families, first-time visitors to the Lakes, and anyone wanting a waterfall and woodland walk without committing to a fell. A walker who would rather have a summit above Ullswater than a waterfall can climb Place Fell from Patterdale instead. Anyone wanting solitude should look elsewhere: the car park and paths fill in school holidays. Stanley Ghyll Force is a comparable ravine walk that Countryfile says feels miles from the district’s tourist trappings, though it lies 30km away as the crow flies, on the far side of the central fells in Eskdale.