When is a Lake District Lake Not A Lake

Rydal Water: The Forty-Acre Technicality

Rydal Water is smaller than some car parks and you can walk around it in twenty minutes, but it still gets the 'water' suffix because apparently size doesn't matter when you're sitting between Grasmere and Wordsworth's house. It's essentially a wide spot in the River Rothay with excellent PR.

21 Jul 2026Read

Haweswater: The Reservoir Pretending to Be Ancient

Haweswater looks timeless until you remember it drowned a village in 1935. The maps still call it a water, but the Manchester Corporation built it with concrete, so technically you're admiring Victorian infrastructure with decent views.

19 Jul 2026Read

Wastwater: The One That's Almost Honest

Wastwater calls itself a 'water' and actually means it, which is refreshingly straightforward by Lake District standards. It's the deepest, coldest, and least interested in pretending to be something it isn't.

The Curious Case of Brotherswater's Name Change

For centuries it was Broad Water, which at least made descriptive sense. Then a legend about drowned siblings caught on, the Victorians loved a tragedy, and the OS map was redrawn. Now we're stuck with it.

Coniston Water and the Apology in Its Name

At least Coniston Water tells you upfront what it is, which is more than can be said for most of its neighbours. The 'Water' suffix does the work that 'Lake' pretends to do everywhere else.

Thirlmere: The Reservoir That Drowned Itself

Thirlmere was a proper lake once, albeit a small one. Then Manchester needed drinking water, and now it's a reservoir pretending to be what it replaced — which is neither a lake nor technically what anyone came to see.

Why Loweswater Flows the Wrong Way

Most lakes drain downhill, which seems reasonable. Loweswater drains uphill into Crummock Water, which shouldn't be possible but is, thanks to glacial intervention and a complete disregard for common sense.

Derwentwater: The Lake That Drowns Its Own Islands

Derwentwater is technically a 'water', but more interestingly, it's one of the few places where you can watch islands appear and disappear depending on rainfall. The floating island isn't floating, but it does a convincing impression every few years.

Ullswater's Three Personalities and One Viking

Ullswater bends twice at sharp angles, giving it three distinct basins that behave like separate bodies of water with different depths, temperatures, and moods. The Viking who named it 'Ulf's water' presumably paddled all the way to the end before realising what he'd committed to.

Ennerdale Water: The Lake District's Least Accessible Water

No road runs along Ennerdale Water's shore, which makes it either wonderfully remote or deeply inconvenient depending on whether you drove here. It's the only major water in the Lakes without a car park at one end and an ice cream van at the other.

Buttermere and Crummock: When One Lake Becomes Two

Buttermere and Crummock Water used to be one body of water until sediment from Sail Beck built a barrier between them. They're now separated by a few hundred metres of flat land and several thousand years of mud, still close enough to share a car park.

Why Windermere Isn't a Lake (And What a Mere Actually Is)

A 'mere' is Old English for a body of water that's broad and shallow. Windermere, at 64 metres deep, is neither of those things, but the name stuck anyway because etymology doesn't care about accuracy.