Lake District Walks

Types of accommodation

Guest House (41)
Self Catering (27)
Bed and Breakfast (39)
Hotel (29)

Areas with accommodation

Coniston
Windermere
Bowness on Windermere
Grange-over-Sands
Penrith
Glenridding
Ambleside
Keswick
Grizebeck
Appleby
Grizedale
Broughton in Furness
Millom
Egremont
Silloth on Solway
Whitehaven
Maryport
Workington
Cockermouth
Ulverston
Cartmel
Ullswater
Rydal
Grasmere
Kendal
Kirkby Lonsdale

Walk name: Dowthwaitehead, near Ullswater

Grade: 2 Approximate length: 5 Miles

This walk starts from Dockray, to reach Dockray from Ullswater drive along the A5091 for about a mile and find the car park. Walk up the small road next to the Royal Hotel signposted for Dowthwaitehead.

Follow this road for approximately a mile until you reach a T junction with a car park opposite named Red Moss. Turn left and follow the footpath until the road splits, keep right and continue in the direction of Dowthwaitehead Farm. Go through the farm gate and turn left, immediately another footpath runs off to the left, signposted Matterdale. Carry straight on until you reach Aira Beck, locate the wooded footbridge, cross this to reach two gates, take the right hand gate and walk up the hill, keeping the wall to the left.

After a short while the wall will drop away to the left, but there are yellow arrows that point you up to the right, continue up to the fence that crosses the side of the hill, just before the fence the footpath goes over a small river then through a gate. After the gate the path continues to climb next to a small river at first then soon moves away to the left.

As the footpath climbs up to the ridge on the right side of Little Aira Beck then crosses just below the ridge. As you reach the highest point of the footpath there is a stone wall with a gap, walk through the gap and down the steep slope ahead until you reach another footpath running across the side of Glencoyne, turn left here. From here there are magnificent views of Ullswater.

The footpath joins a stone wall and eventually reaches a stile, walk past the stile for just under a mile until the wall starts to drop away to the right. Take the clear left footpath at this point until you can see the village of Dockray and the start of the walk.

Please note: Our walks have been created from submissions over the years, we got so many we decided to put them online. Search Cumbria accepts no liability if any signs, routes etc change or if you happen get lost. It is advisable to check the weather forecast for the Lake District and consult your OS map for exact details.