Beatrix Potter literary route through the Lake District

Did you grow up with the Peter Rabbit stories? This Beatrix Potter literary route takes you through the Lake District landscapes that inspired the writer and illustrator, all the way to Hill Top, the house she was able to buy thanks to the success of her first books.

The trip starts in Windermere and stops first outside Wray Castle, a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle where Beatrix Potter spent her sixteenth birthday and began her love affair with the area's mountains and lakes. Next you'll reach Near Sawrey, the village where she lived after her marriage, and you'll recognise spots that appear in her illustrations, such as the Tower Bank Arms. There you'll go inside Hill Top, her house.

From there you'll carry on to Esthwaite Water, one of the least-known lakes in the national park and one of Beatrix Potter's favourites, which she once described as “ultra romantic”. Close by is Hawkshead, the village where she met her husband, William Heelis. On the last stretch you'll travel through the many lands and farms the writer gradually acquired, with Tarn Hows, Coniston Water and Yewdale Valley as a backdrop: the same landscapes where the film Miss Potter was shot.

And Windermere is also the starting point for the Brontë sisters literary route.