Several Days in the Lake District, Driven Very Slowly

On a map the Lake District looks small; in reality it is slow. Valleys radiate outward here, and almost every route joining one to another climbs a pass, Kirkstone, Honister, Wrynose, Hardknott, on roads narrow and steep and demanding. Hand the wheel to somebody else and the whole experience alters. You spend the ascent looking out of the window instead of at the crown of the road, and the passes turn into the highlight rather than the obstacle.

South to north tends to work for a first day. Windermere and Bowness open the region, then Ambleside and Rydal, then Grasmere, where Dove Cottage holds the room in which Wordsworth wrote most of what he is remembered for. Out of Ambleside the Kirkstone Pass climbs sharply before dropping to Ullswater, quietly preferred to Windermere by a good many people: longer, narrower, hemmed by fells, with a steamer running its length.

Wilder up north. Keswick stands at the head of Derwentwater with Borrowdale behind and the Honister Pass past that, and the further west your road goes the emptier things become. Quieter still are Coniston and the Duddon Valley away in the south-west. Give it two days and you see the region properly. Give it three and you can stop when the light starts doing something, which in Cumbria is the entire point.

Practically speaking, the car and the chauffeur are what we supply, and across a multi-day itinerary your chauffeur's own accommodation is arranged by us and set out in the written quotation. Hotels, admissions and boat tickets you book yourselves. Yours holds no guide licence and offers no commentary, though a qualified guide can be arranged to travel alongside you should you want one.

Nowhere else in England does the choice of vehicle count for as much. Against the passes, the weather and the hotel drives, a Range Rover keeps its composure far better than a low saloon, and the seating height lets you see over the walls, which on roads like these is no minor thing.