July 30, 2025
Keswick to Buttermere
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Our plan was to ride to Buttermere (only a 21 km ride) but to ride via the Honister Pass, which is a steep sucker of a climb.
We had a schedule because I had booked a 12:30 pm tour of the Honister Slate Mine at the very top of Honister Pass. Because of that we could not dawdle too much despite an allowed checkout time of 11 am. We peeled out of Keswick around 10:45 am and already the town was hopping. Fyi: if you need mountain or hiking gear, there are about 30 stores that can serve you here.
We rode down the east side of Derwentwater (the name of the lake) outside of Keswick and I am not sure that was the best choice - but it was the shortest route. There was consistent traffic the whole way and since there was vacation traffic, the drivers were a little more impatient than normal. No shoulder (of course) but the speed limit was only 40 mph, which helps you feel like you will NOT inevitably get run over. But, we pulled over a dozen times today to let cars pass.
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We rode through Borrowdale (supposedly a not-to-be-missed village) and then at the 12 km point the climb started: 15 - 20 percent grade straight up. The worst for me was that it was a single lane road (but going two ways, of course) with a fair amount of traffic, and with those grades it's much easier if you can wiggle back and forth across the road - but you can’t because there is traffic. I felt horrible because I passed a woman on a road bike who was weaving all over the place - I hope she made it. Of course, today, since there was only a ten percent chance of rain, it rained on the pass (and was windy to boot). We made it to the peak and the Honister Mine was right there. It was stunning but we didn’t enjoy it too much until we got up to the pass.
The Honister Mine is the last remaining slate mine in England and it has a storied and somewhat lurid past. There has been slate mining at Honister since the late 17th Century. Throughout the Victorian era through to the 1960s it was the primary employer for the Borrowdale Valley. We learned on the tour that the conditions were deplorable with boys as young as 7 years old working in the mine alongside their fathers in the dark with rats running all over the place. The mine closed in 1980 after a long period of decline and then in 1995 a local business man named Mark Weir bought the mine and reopened it. The amount of mining they actually do here now - we think —is minuscule. The slate is beautiful (it has a blue/green tinge) and is strong, heavy, and very expensive. Historically, Honister slate was used for slate roofs with only 8% of the rock being good enough to sell. The rest was dumped as slag. Today they are able to use over 90% of what is mined and use it to make souvenirs, keys chains, dish wear, sculptures etc. If we could carry anything extra, a souvenir from here would have been a consideration.
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The tour guide said that 50 percent of the revenue - or profit — not sure which, comes from mining, and the other 50 percent comes from the tourist activities associated with the mine. Besides the tours, there is rock climbing, a very popular Via Ferrata (the only one in Britain), and next year they plan to open a zip line. The place was very crowded and it felt a lot more like aan adventure park, not a mine.
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It was a good window into Britain's industrial past but I am easily exhausted by crowds, so we were glad to get on our bikes and complete the last 7 km to our destination for the night, Buttermere. It was a magical 7 km, riding through the valley after a killer descent (the sign said 25 percent and I was riding my brakes the whole way) and the sun peaked through. It’s a signature valley and this was reflected by how many hikers and cars there were on the short 7 km ride. We rode along Buttermere Lake for the last 2 km of the ride.
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We arrived in Buttermere to another crush of people. It’s a tiny village with two hotels and two tea shops and it was crowded. We got checked into the Buttermere Court Hotel and it felt like a hotel in a National Park in the American West; pretty rustic, basic, hordes of people, in an amazing location, and expensive. We had not eaten lunch and it was 3 pm so we walked across to the Croft Tea Shop to get a bowl of soup to stave us off until dinner time, and it was a bit of a shit show. We stood in line for a long time behind a family who had just ordered 6 hot drinks, and then had a long wait for our bowl of soup. I think we have been hanging out with way too many sheep and not enough humans and I fear we may prefer the sheeps' company.
We cleaned up and figured out the weird details of our room. It was warm inside the room so Dave did his usual process to try to cool things down. Unfortunately, the internet is terrible so Dave fussed around with that as well. Both of these issues aren't great because we are here for two nights.
Dinner was going to be either at the Buttermere Court Hotel or the Bridge Hotel. Since we are here for two nights, it will be one night in each place. There are no reservations at either place. Tonight we stood in a line at the Buttermere Court pub, ordered our food, and it was brought to us. We split fish and chips. We have not eaten fish and chips very much and I owed Dave a fish and chips night. We talked to Craig at the table next door; he had gotten divorced last year and he was on a mission this year to climb the Wainwrights which is a list of 214 mountain peaks in the Lake District. Climbing the Wainrights is a form of “peak bagging. ” He has a camper van and he drives over from the Yorkshire Dales about every other weekend to hike. Today he climbed 25 km and he has completed 139 peaks so far. (Many of the peaks are small so you can do multiple peaks in a day). He was a good advocate for how cool this area is.
We hope to do some type of hike tomorrow since it's an off the bike day. I feel like I might be coming down with something so we shall see.
I will leave you with this scene out our window last night
Today's ride: 21 km (13 miles)
Total: 3,122 km (1,939 miles)
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This place is mythical to me.
On my 1982 post Uni voyage of discovery I was headed from Keswick to Buttermere just like you, but when I got to the base of the pass at Seatoller, in the pissing rain, and saw the 25% grade sign, I said to myself ‘I’m not doing that!’. I retreated back to the Yew Tree Pub and just before going in, spotted one of the classic ‘UK Red Phone Boxes’ and made a collect call home to my parents. I’d been fretting about whether I had passed a metaphysics course I’d taken because …. Well ….the nature of metaphysics is that you just don’t know.
If I’d flunked the course I wouldn’t be getting my degree and life would get complicated. Once the collect call went through my dad let me know that not only had I passed, but that day he had gone to my convocation and picked up my BSc degree! A pretty big piece of news for me.
To celebrate, rather than going to the pub, I went into the fancier restaurant they had there and blew about a weeks budget on a celebratory meal (and a few bevies) and then proceeded to sleep beside a nearby stone wall in a pasture with a few cows, shielded a bit from the rain by my first generation homemade goretex bivy sac.
Never did ride over Honister pass but we’ve driven over it a few times. We’ll have to go back and take in the slate mine!
Thanks for Sparking these wonderful memories… and huge cudo’s for braving the insanely steep Lancashire roads.
1 hour ago