Above the village of Grasmere, in a serene fold of the Lake District that William Wordsworth spent his life eulogising, is Forest Side Hotel, a Victorian Gothic mansion that was left for decades before reopening in 2016. It's the work of Cumbrian hotelier Andrew Wildsmith, and it makes no secret of the fact that it's really a restaurant with rooms. In fact, Paul Leonard's kitchen has held a Michelin star since day one and picked up a green star for sustainability 10 years later. Around it lie 43 acres of woodland and walled garden, roamed by roe deer and the odd Herdwick sheep. Come hungry.
/-3.0157809182436512,54.46404317168935,6/600x400?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoidGltYnVrdHV0cmF2ZWwiLCJhIjoiY2poMGw1eHpkMmRkbDJ6bW8xYWZ5OGpjYyJ9.PYvAO7lUJ40SOpGvwmQLqw&attribution=false&logo=false)
A grey Lakeland-slate mansion that was coaxed back to life in 2016, the house wears its Gothic bones well. Sink into a deep velvet couch by the wood-burning stove in the bird-print bar, or claim a log fire in one of the original Victorian fireplaces. Outside, a red-brick walled garden hides a waterfall and a stone circle of petrified limestone. The dining room, however is cool and restrained: scrubbed timber-and-steel tables, earthenware thrown by local potters, and an open kitchen where the magic happens.
Twenty bedrooms, each named for a tree in the grounds (Oak, the largest, has a bathtub with a view over the greenhouses) are split across three tiers: eight Cosy, seven Superb and five Master suites. The quality doesn't change, only the floor space, so even a Cosy room gets the same Zoffany fabrics, pale-blue calm, Herdwick-wool carpet and a Harrison Spinks bed built to the hotel's own specs. Picture windows frame the woodland, limestone bathrooms keep things grounded, and six of the rooms welcome dogs.
Truth be told, the real activity here is dinner, but the 43 acres are most certainly worth a roam. Wander the foraging garden trying to name the herbs, watch for roe deer and red squirrels on the fell, then walk the old Coffin Route into the village (a 20-minute amble the pallbearers once took). Climb Helm Crag for the Lion and the Lamb rock, pay respects at Wordsworth's grave in St Oswald's churchyard, and buy a slab of Grasmere Gingerbread to take home (if you can avoid temptation), baked to an 1854 recipe. Lake Windermere's iconic cruises are a short drive south.
Dinner that's grown over the garden wall. A one-acre walled plot and fellside foraging feed the green-starred kitchen, and the result tastes like Cumbria on a plate.
Book the eight-course menu, not the four – you'd be leaving the best of the kitchen behind! Your menu will arrive tucked into a Heaton Cooper lakeland print, yours to take home.
It's a restaurant with rooms, so there's no pool or spa for a rainy afternoon. The kitchen is also closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so time your visit accordingly.
With its wild fells and mirror-still lakes, the Lake District is England at its most dramatically beautiful.
