10 of the best walkers’ inns in the UK
This article will leave you itching to get your walking boots on! Here is the top inn on the list – follow the hyperlink to view the others.
Wasdale Head Inn, Lake District
Famously one of the early focal points in the birth of mountaineering, the Wasdale Head was a base for the first English alpinists from the early 1800s.
Many luminaries of the climbing world have visited since, and its Ritson’s Bar and Residents’ Bar remain legendary climbers’ meeting points. It was here, too, that the Lake District Ski Club was founded in 1936, when a local climber, Molly FitzGibbon, marched into the bar and announced that she was starting one.
As a rare, and isolated, hotel in the Wasdale valley, it sits at the end of Wastwater, the Lake District’s deepest and arguably most dramatic lake: there are terrible scree slopes on one side; on the other an incongruous fringe of beaches popular with swimmers in summer; and above, the highest mountains.
From the tables outside, the view is dominated by the steep flanks of Kirk Fell and Great Gable. The crowds come to bag Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak, but those who hike in the opposite direction – beside the lovely Mosedale Beck and up to Black Sail Pass and the summit of Pillar – can leave most other walkers behind.