A Lake District Walking Holiday: What to Pack for Buttermere and Beyond
Buttermere has a way of making packing lists feel personal. Get it right and you'll remember the lake-shore path, Haystacks in the morning light and the pint afterwards. Get it wrong and you'll remember your feet, your soaked jumper, and the shop in Keswick where you bought everything in an emergency.
After watching thousands of walkers set off from our corner of the valley — and welcoming a fair few of them back in a considerably quieter mood — here's the packing list that actually survives contact with Lakeland weather.
The golden rule: layers, not gambles
The Lake District can produce four seasons before lunch, and Buttermere sits in a valley that specialises in it.
The answer is always layers: a wicking base, a warm mid-layer (fleece or light down), and a genuinely waterproof shell — not shower-resistant, waterproof. There's a real difference, and the fells are where you find out which one you bought. Add a hat and gloves to the bottom of the pack even in summer; on the tops you'll meet weather the valley never mentioned, and a ridge in the cloud at 600 metres is a different country from the lake shore in sunshine.
Waterproof overtrousers divide opinion right up until the moment they're needed. Pack them. Nobody has ever stood on Scarth Gap in horizontal rain regretting the extra 300 grams.
One more thing about cotton: it holds water, and wet cotton against skin in the wind is how mild days turn unpleasant. Save the jeans and the cotton t-shirt for the evening.
Footwear: the decision that makes the holiday
Nothing shapes a walking holiday like what's on your feet, and the honest answer is that different walks around Buttermere ask for genuinely different things.
For the high fells — Red Pike, High Stile, High Crag, the Haystacks horseshoe — sturdy boots with proper grip and ankle support remain the sensible choice, worn in well before you arrive. This is not the terrain for experiments. Wet Lakeland rock, loose scree on the descents and paths that turn into streams after rain all ask for a stiff sole and a good tread, and no amount of foot-health enthusiasm changes that. If you're heading up, go properly shod.
But here's what surprises many first-timers: much of the best walking here is valley walking. The lake circuit, the paths towards Crummock Water, the wander to Scale Force, village-to-village rambles — miles of well-made, largely level paths where heavy mountain boots are overkill that your legs quietly pay for by evening.
For those days, experienced walkers increasingly pack a second, lighter pair: flexible, wide in the toe box, flat to the ground. Finnish-designed VIBAe barefoot-style boots are a good example of the type — vegetable-tanned, chrome-free leather that handles Lakeland drizzle, handmade in Portugal at a third-generation family workshop, with a bendy sole and a roomy fit that keep feet fresh over long, gentler miles. The removable footbed is a quietly useful detail on a walking holiday too: it comes out to dry overnight, which is more than can be said for a glued-in insole after a wet afternoon.
If that second pair also needs to look respectable at dinner, wide fit Chelsea boots cover both jobs — the lake circuit in the morning, a table by the fire in the evening, no change of footwear in between. Your evening self, padding contentedly to the table, will endorse the two-pair strategy.
A word on drying leather. Lakeland will get your boots wet; that's not the problem. Drying them by the fire is. Heat is what actually kills leather — it shrinks and cracks it — so stuff wet boots with newspaper, take the footbeds out, and leave them somewhere airy and cool overnight. They'll be ready in the morning and still be there in five years.
Whatever you bring: proper walking socks, two pairs minimum — one on, one drying. And blister plasters packed before you need them, which is the only time they work.
What the walking actually looks like here
It helps to know what you're packing for. Buttermere offers an unusually complete range within a very small area.
The lake circuit is the classic and deserves its reputation: roughly four and a half miles, largely flat, right around the water, including a short hand-cut tunnel through the rock that delights every child who has ever walked it. Two hours at a gentle pace. Do it early or late for the reflections.
Crummock Water and Scale Force make a longer, still-manageable day, with the highest waterfall in the Lake District as a destination — atmospheric rather than dramatic, and best after rain, which is not usually a difficult condition to arrange.
Rannerdale is the one to time deliberately. In May the valley fills with bluebells in open ground rather than woodland, which is unusual enough that people travel for it, and Rannerdale Knotts above it is a short, steep, wildly disproportionate reward of a climb.
Fleetwith Pike gives you the view down the length of the lake that everybody photographs, from the ridge that everybody underestimates.
Haystacks is the pilgrimage. Alfred Wainwright's favourite fell, and the place he asked for his ashes to be scattered, up by Innominate Tarn. It's not the highest thing here by some distance, and it's still the one people come back down from grinning.
The High Stile ridge — Red Pike, High Stile, High Crag — is the serious horseshoe: a proper mountain day, big ascent, exposed in bad weather, and one of the finest ridges in the region on a clear one.
Honister Pass at the head of the valley connects you to Borrowdale, the slate mine, and some of the most dramatic road-side scenery in England, if a day off the feet is required.
Walking with children, or with a mixed group
This valley is unusually good at accommodating groups who don't all want the same day, which is worth knowing if your party contains both a ridge enthusiast and someone who came for the reading.
The lake circuit is the great leveller: flat, safe, short enough for young legs, interesting enough for old ones, and blessed with the rock tunnel, which does more for morale at mile two than any amount of encouragement. Rannerdale Knotts is the perfect first "proper" fell — a genuine summit with genuine views, reached in well under an hour of climbing.
For mixed-ability groups, the trick is to split and reconvene rather than compromise: the ridge party goes up over Scarth Gap, the valley party walks round the water, and everybody meets in the village mid-afternoon with equally strong opinions about who had the better day.
Two practical notes for families. Children feel cold and wet far faster than adults do, so pack their spare layers before your own. And the shore path has unfenced water along much of its length — obvious, but worth saying once.
What we see people get wrong
Three things, consistently, from where we stand.
They set off too late. An eight o'clock start in summer buys you the best light, an empty path and a comfortable margin if the day takes longer than planned.
They plan the hardest walk for the first day. Legs need a day to remember what they're for; the classic pattern is an ambitious Saturday followed by a Sunday spent limping round the village.
And they underestimate the descents. Everyone trains for going up. It's coming down — on wet rock, with tired legs, in boots that were fine three hours ago — where the toll actually lands. Take the descent slowly, and let your knees do less braking than your pride suggests.
Weather, and how to read it here
Two rules that regulars follow without thinking.
Check a mountain forecast, not a town forecast. The Met Office mountain forecast and the Mountain Weather Information Service both give conditions at summit level — wind speed, cloud base, freezing level. A pleasant valley morning and a 50 mph gust on the ridge coexist perfectly happily.
Assume the valley is lying to you. Buttermere can be still and bright while the tops are in cloud, and the reverse happens too. Look at the cloud base and where it sits on the fell opposite; that's more useful than any app.
And a practical note: phone signals in this valley are patchy at best. That's part of the charm, and it's also why the map in the daypack list below is not there for decoration.
The daypack that earns its place
- Map and compass — and the ability to use them. Phone batteries and Lakeland valleys have a complicated relationship, particularly in cold weather.
- Water, and more food than seems reasonable. Fell miles are hungrier than flat ones.
- A small first-aid kit and a headtorch, all year round. Days end faster than planned, especially in autumn.
- A dry bag for spare layers. "Showerproof" rucksacks are a Lakeland joke.
- Sun cream and sunglasses, yes, genuinely — reflection off water and cloud does real work on a bright day.
- A whistle, and the knowledge that six blasts, repeated, is the distress signal.
- The best refreshment stops in the valleys still like it.
Timing your trip
Buttermere rewards every season differently.
May and June bring the longest days and the valley at its greenest, with the Rannerdale bluebells landing in May and the lambs everywhere.
July and August are glorious and busy. Start walks before nine and you'll have the lake circuit largely to yourself; the crowd here is a mid-morning phenomenon and it thins again by five.
September and October trade a little daylight for quieter paths, the first bronze on the fells, and the best light of the year for photographs.
Winter walking here is beautiful and serious in equal measure: short days, ice on the passes, and fell-top conditions that demand full kit, winter skills and honest self-assessment. The valley walks, meanwhile, are magnificent in winter and entirely reasonable — a frozen lake shore under a low sun is worth the trip on its own.
Whenever you come, book accommodation well ahead. The valley has considerably more admirers than beds.
Getting here, and getting around
By car, Buttermere is reached over Honister or Newlands Pass from Keswick, or up the valley from Cockermouth. Both passes are narrow, steep and spectacular; neither is a place to meet a delivery lorry in a hurry, so take them gently.
Parking in the village is limited and fills early in season — another argument for staying in the valley rather than driving into it each morning.
In the warmer months the Honister Rambler bus service links Buttermere with Keswick over the pass, which opens up the single best trick in Lakeland walking: catch the bus out, walk back. No car shuffle, no there-and-back, and a linear route is almost always better than a loop. Check current timetables before you rely on it — services here are seasonal.
And the things people forget
Swimwear, if you're brave. Buttermere's water is famously clear and famously bracing, and the swimmers who go in never regret it as loudly as they claim.
Something comfortable for the evening. Good pubs deserve better than damp boots.
A power bank, since cold weather flattens phone batteries and this valley gives them little to do but search for the signal.
A paper booking confirmation, for exactly the same reason as the map.
Binoculars, if you have them. There are red squirrels here, and buzzards over the crags most days.
A word about this valley's own story
It's worth knowing, while you're here, that the inn at the centre of the village has a story older than any of the guidebooks.
In the late 1700s, a young woman named Mary Robinson — the landlord's daughter — was written about by a travel writer, and became, improbably, one of the most famous people in England. The Maid of Buttermere drew visitors up the valley for years, until an infamous impostor married her under a false name in 1802 and the whole affair became a national scandal. Wordsworth wrote about her. Coleridge covered the story as a journalist. Melvyn Bragg turned it into a novel two centuries later.
She lived here, in this village, in the building people now walk past on their way to the lake — which is a fair reminder that the valley has always been better at stories than its size suggests.
The last word
Pack like the weather is plotting against you, and it usually rewards you with the opposite: those improbable Buttermere days when the lake goes to glass, the fells double themselves in the water, and every summit earns its photograph.
Then all you'll need is an excuse to stay another night — and we may know somewhere.