Eighteen of us, three nights, one field on the shore of Windermere.
After North Wales in 2025 we wanted somewhere with more to do and less driving between things, so this year we booked Stock Park Lakeside Camping at Low Stott Park, near Newby Bridge at the southern tip of Windermere. Non-electric grass pitches, campfires allowed, and — the bit that turned out to matter most — the site has its own private frontage on the lake.
Most of the Windermere shoreline is privately owned and closed to the public. Having a stretch of it included in the pitch fee changes what the weekend can be.
The group was seventeen adults and one baby under a year old, driving up from London on the first Friday of the school holidays. That combination — a big group, a wide spread of ages and fitness, an infant, and one person who could not walk far — shaped almost every decision we made.
The pages
- Our itinerary — what we planned for each of the four days
- Scafell Pike from Wasdale — the numbers, and what we got wrong first time
- Hardknott, Wrynose and Kirkstone — driving the passes, and which one to skip
- Fishing Windermere — licences, rules and what you can actually keep
- Camping for eighteen — food quantities, kit, and what everybody forgets
Three things I would tell anyone planning this
Split the group, but give it a rendezvous. Trying to keep eighteen people doing the same thing all weekend is how everybody ends up doing something nobody wanted. We split on the Saturday — some walked up Scafell Pike, the rest took the boat up the lake — and had them converge at Ambleside in the afternoon. Two good days instead of one compromised one.
Plan around the toilets, not the scenery. With a baby and someone with a leg injury, the binding constraint on every day was where you could reliably stop. Once we started building the days backwards from that, they got much better.
The best bits were the cheapest. A fire pit, a kayak on the lake at eight in the morning, and a rod on the shore. The paid attractions were fine. The field was better.
Conclusion
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