Windermere Lake Cruises

Windermere Lake Cruises

Place Name: Windermere Lake Cruises

Location: Various around Lake Windermere

Cost: Varies depending on cruise type

Parking: various pay and display car parks - information is well provided on website

Time Required: 45 minutes to all day

Restrictions: Dogs to be kept on leads and not allowed on the furniture.

Refreshments: There is a small bar on most boats that does tea/coffee and alcoholic drinks

Website:  https://www.windermere-lakecruises.co.uk/

As you can expect with a name like Windermere Cruises, the attraction here was going out on either a launch boat or a steam boat on the lake. The company offers a variety of packages depending on where you sail from, how long you want to stay on the boat and whether you want to do a walk around Wray Castle as part of their seasonal walking cruise. The larger trips use the steamer, the smaller ones use the wooden launch boats.

The plan from day one had been to do one of the cruises on the lake, but like all great plans, other things came up and instead of a full day on the lake we only had time to fit in the 45minute Island Tour. With Missy being prone to the odd bout of travel sickness, it also made sense to just do a small ride just in case. The Island tour sails in and out of the Bowness harbour every half hour. The location allows for plenty of ice cream, duck feeding and strolls along the shore line before going onto the tour, and if you're up for it, more of the same once your back off the boat.

Once we'd bought our ticket (dogs go on free) we simply strolled onto the boat. The staff made no complaint to us sitting downstairs in the shelter on the nice soft chairs (Missy on the carpet) and had no problem with us all going onto the more exposed top level during the tour. The weather was fortunate enough that we stayed up top most of the time, but it's good to know that had the elements turned against us, we could all huddle downstairs together.

The boat set off and we had a guided tour of the different islands - it was interesting to see that one had simply eroded down to a single tree whilst others had been the film set to Swallows and Amazons whilst the largest was privately owned with its own house and everything! The only real complaint to be had was that the information was quite brief and the guidebook we had purchased covered all the tours so the information on just the islands was a touch sparse.

Missy stole the show as usual and we got a lot of compliments on how well behaved she was - truth be told not a lot phases her and she really does take new and odd surroundings in her stride. She thankfully didn't suffer any travel sickness and strolled quite calmly off the boat with us.

And yes, we did go back and have a second ice cream on our stroll along the shore line!

Overall rating : 4.5/5 - Timetables and maps were a touch confusing to figure out, but the staff were great with us. Great fun and a novel way to get about if you have a whole day to do it.

That's the last of the Lake District reviews for now, we hope to get back down again soon, but in the meantime please feel free to let me know any recommendations in the Scotland area!

attraction, Cumbria, dog, dog friendly, Dog walking, England, Windermere lake cruises, Lake District, missy, pet