How to Visit and Support the Farms Behind Lake District Tweed This Easter
Easter feels like the real start of the farming year.
The lambs arrive, the days lengthen and the fells begin to shake off the long grey of winter and the air fills with birdsong. After years of making Lake District Tweed and weaving the wool from farms across each of the thirteen main valleys, spring makes me want to say something simple: go and find these farms.
Go and visit them. Stay in their barns, eat their food, buy their produce.
The best thing you can do for a landscape you love - the landscape that made the wool in your tweed - is to support the people who look after it.
This Easter, we've put together a guide to the farms in our network that welcome visitors: somewhere to stay, somewhere to eat after a walk, a farm shop, a proper experience of what Lakeland farming actually looks like.
These are our farming friends. This is how you can support them.
STAY ON A WORKING FARM
There is something about waking up on a working hill farm that you can't quite replicate anywhere else. Breakfast is different when there are sheep outside the window.
Hollows Farm, Borrowdale:
Ruby and Matthew farm in the heart of Borrowdale, in a place that has been farmed since the 17th century. They offer a self-catering cottage in the farmyard, two woodland glamping pods tucked into the ancient Atlantic woodland above the River Derwent and a campsite that opens at Easter and runs through to October. The campsite sits beside the Derwent; one of the better wild swimming stretches in Cumbria. No Wi-Fi and very little phone signal. hollowsfarm.co.uk
Harry Place Farm, Great Langdale
Jonny took over the National Trust tenancy from his father, and with Nicola has built a farm stay at the foot of the Langdale Pikes. The fell views from the glamping pods are about as dramatic as England gets. Each pod has a wood-fired hot tub. The whole family lives on site so the quad bikes and working dogs will likely pass your door. greatlangdaleglamping.co.uk
Rainors Farm, Wasdale
Claire has thought carefully about what she's offering. A B&B room in the Georgian farmhouse, two yurts — one in the paddock facing Scafell Pike, one beside a stream with a campfire area — and a self-catering cottage for six. Wastwater is ten minutes away. Rainors Farm
Low Bridge End Farm, St John's in the Vale
A 50-acre traditional farm in a quiet valley that most people drive past without stopping. The Chaplin-Bryce family offer a camping barn and a hayloft cottage and the farm sits on one of the nicer walking routes in the northern Lakes. More on their tea garden below. campingbarn.com
Nibthwaite Grange Farm, Coniston
Our farm. At the southern end of Coniston Water, John's family have farmed here for six generations. We have two off-grid holiday lets: Wrostlers Barn, a converted traditional barn in the wood on the lake's edge, and Cottage in the Clouds, a stone cottage high on the fell with views south over the landscape. You're on the doorstep of the water, the old woodland and the quieter end of the Lake District. We also have a Campsite in the Clearing; set within an ancient woodland this campsite is for single occupancy groups. It’s ideal for groups of family and friends. Our farm shop is back at the farm where you collect keys.
Lowick Bridge Campsite, Coniston
John’s brother Tim farms just a mile down the road from us and he has set up a campsite on his farm. It’s kid and dog friendly and a prefect base for Soth Lakes lovers.
EAT AND DRINK
Low Bridge End Farm Tea Garden, St John's in the Vale
A seasonal tea garden that walkers have been stopping at for decades without anyone making much fuss about it. Homemade cake, something warm. It opens at Easter, so check ahead.
BUY DIRECT FROM THE FARM
Buying food and produce direct from the farm is one of the most straightforward ways to support upland farming. Here are farms in our network where you can do that.
The Little Farm Shop, Nibthwaite Grange Farm
I should be upfront: this is of course our shop. We sell the full Lake District Tweed collection, wool gifts and The Soap Dairy's natural soaps and skincare — made from the milk of our Jersey house cow. We also sell frozen meat boxes. The shop is open Wednesdays and Saturdays, and by appointment. Come and say hello. ur address is Bletherbarrow Lane, near Ulverston, LA12 8DB.
Cragg House Farm, Buttermere
Rachel and Alistair's Farm Hut sells handcrafted goat's milk soaps — made with milk from their rare breed Bagot and Royal Golden Guernsey goats — alongside free-range eggs, seasonal meat, and Herdwick wool and yarn direct from their hefted flock.
Rawfoot Farm, Haweswater
Richard and Laila raise Wagyu beef on herb-rich, wildflower pastures near Bampton. The result is a very, very good product. Cuts are available frozen from their on-farm shop. Bring a cool bag. They also sell Highlander sheep produce. Well worth the detour if you're in the Haweswater area.
GET A REAL EXPERIENCE OF LAKELAND FARMING
Cragg House Farm, Buttermere
Rachel and Alistair offer shepherd experiences, working alongside their Border Collies learning to herd sheep, as well as private goat picnic experiences in the paddock. Nothing is staged. It's a working farm, and that shows.
Wild Haweswater
The farms at Naddle and Swindale in the Haweswater valley are part of a long-term nature recovery project run in partnership between the RSPB and United Utilities. They run bookable wildlife experiences: badger watching from a purpose-built hide, red squirrel mornings in Naddle Forest, dawn chorus walks, wild camping with native Cumbrian Fell Ponies. The Swindale Beck was re-routed back to its original course here, and Atlantic salmon returned within months. It's a serious piece of work.
READ THE BOOKS THAT BRING THESE FARMS TO LIFE
Before you visit Ullswater this Easter, read James and Helen Rebanks. It changes how you look at the fells.
James Rebanks farms at Racy Ghyll in the Matterdale Valley, above Ullswater. His family has farmed there for six centuries. The Shepherd's Life came out in 2015, went to number one and was translated into sixteen languages - not because it was fashionable, but because it said something true about what it means to belong to a place, and to know a landscape so completely that you and it are no longer separate things. English Pastoral won the Wainwright Prize and is, I think, one of the most important books written about the British countryside in recent years. The Place of Tides takes James to the remote islands of Norway, but the eye he brings is entirely the one shaped by those fell slopes above Ullswater.
Helen's book - The Farmer's Wife: My Life in Days - tells the story that James's books don't. The life of the person holding everything together: in the kitchen, raising children, keeping the home running while also being an equal partner in the farm. Helen grew up on a Lake District farm herself and she writes with the same rooted sense of belonging. The book is honest and funny and there are good recipes in it besides.
If you're visiting Ullswater this Easter - which you should be - read them first. You'll look at the Herdwick sheep on Gowbarrow and understand, properly, what it means that they've been hefted to those same fell slopes for centuries.
All available in good bookshops.
We made Lake District Tweed because the farms that shaped this landscape deserve to be celebrated. Every piece of tweed we sell comes from the fleece of farmers in our network - Sue, Rachel, Sam, David, James, Richard, Claire, Eddie, Jonny and more - people who get up every morning and do the work of keeping the fells looking the way they do.
This Easter, the best thing you can do for the Lake District is go deeper into it. Turn off the A591, follow the signs down the little lanes, stop at the farm shop, have cake at the tea garden on the fell path, book a night in the camping barn.
The landscape gives us a great deal. These are some of the ways we can give something back.
Happy Easter from all of us at Lake District Tweed.
Our farm is the home of Lake District Tweed. Find the full range at the farm shop and here at lakedistricttweed.com
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