The Lake District is England's most dramatic landscape — a UNESCO World Heritage national park of sixteen lakes, the highest mountains in England and a literary culture that has been inspiring writers and poets since Wordsworth settled at Grasmere in 1799.

Windermere is the largest lake in England and the most visited — a ten-mile stretch of water flanked by wooded hills, with the towns of Bowness and Ambleside on its shores and the Langdale Pikes rising behind. But the finest lakes are the quieter ones: Ullswater, with its steamer service and its daffodil walks; Coniston, with the Old Man above and the Ruskin Museum below; Wastwater, the deepest and most dramatic, with the screes dropping sheer into the water.

The Lakeland fells are the finest walking country in England — Alfred Wainwright's seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells describes 214 summits, each with its own character and its own rewards. Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England, is a full day's walk from any direction. Helvellyn, via Striding Edge, is the finest ridge walk in the country.

The literary landscape of the Lake District is extraordinary in its depth — Wordsworth at Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount, Coleridge at Greta Hall, Beatrix Potter at Hill Top, John Ruskin at Brantwood. Bella Via designs Lake District itineraries that combine the walking with the literary culture and the extraordinary food of the region.

The Lake District rewards those who arrive with time and leave with a deeper understanding of what the English landscape can be when it is at its most dramatic.