The green Lakeland valley running south from Derwentwater into the high fells, wooded, wet and much of it looked after by the National Trust
Open accessNational Trust land — free to wander
Borrowdale is the valley that runs south from Derwentwater up into the heart of the Lake District, and for a lot of people it is the loveliest bit of the whole place. The valley floor is a patchwork of small fields and stone walls, the sides are hung with oak woods, and the fells rise steeply on either side until the road threads through a narrow gap known as the Jaws of Borrowdale before opening out again. The National Trust owns a great deal of it, so much of the woodland and fell is open to walk.
Those oak woods are the reason ecologists get excited: the mild, wet Atlantic climate makes them a temperate rainforest, dripping with mosses, ferns and lichens. It is genuinely one of the wettest inhabited places in England up at the head of the valley, around Seathwaite, so the greenery comes at a price and you should expect it to be damp underfoot. Seathwaite has a place in history too, as the graphite dug from the fells here fed the pencil trade over in Keswick.
Borrowdale is the springboard for some of Lakeland’s best walking, from the woods and the Taylorgill Force waterfall to the long haul up onto Glaramara or beyond to the Scafell range. The Cumbria Way passes through. Weather in the high fells turns fast, so carry proper kit and a map if you are heading up. The little villages of Seatoller and Stonethwaite sit at the valley’s inner end, with a bus running up from Keswick in the season.
