On the eastern side of Lake Windermere, up the winding Crook Road and past the broody, rolling fells, you'll find the Gilpin Hotel & Lake House. The Cunliffe family have spent six generations turning this Lakeland bolthole into one of England's most coveted retreats and there are actually two abodes set a mile apart: the 21-acre Gilpin Hotel, with its Michelin-starred restaurant, pan-Asian Spice and a meadow of llamas and micro pigs, and the six-bedroom Lake House, hidden in 100 private acres on the bank of Knipe Tarn. Both run on the same motto, "love and laughter," and both deliver it with aplomb (with plenty of G&Ts to go around).
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The hotel is a maze of low-ceilinged rooms, blazing winter fires and squashy sofas, art on every wall and a cosy bar mixing a proper old fashioned. Two restaurants sit side by side: the Michelin-starred SOURCE, fine dining without a whiff of stuffiness, and Gilpin Spice, a riot of open-kitchen pan-Asian small plates from the spice trail. A mile off, the Lake House is more rambling country home than hotel, all bifold doors onto the lawn, roaring hearths and a frozen tarn that steams when the hot tubs are bubbling.
The hotel has 30 rooms. Half are in the Edwardian main house, and are generous and bold with patterned wallpapers, thick curtains and heaped cushions. The rest are a tad more modern, scattered throughout the grounds, and some have private hot tubs. The headline acts are the Spa Lodges and Spa Suites that are kitted out with saunas, steam rooms and automated massage chairs (really!). The Lake House's six rooms, each named after a family daughter, are open-plan and flooded with light. Ask for Ethel: small, but the view over Knipe Tarn is the loveliest of all.
Honestly, you might never leave. Soak in the hot tub watching the steam drift over the tarn, take a rowing boat out among the wild ducks, or try your hand at coarse fishing. Walk up to Cat's Crag for 360-degree views towards the Coniston and Langdale fells, with a herd of wild deer for company. Further afield, Windermere, England's longest lake, is a four-mile hop for cruises, and Wordsworth's Grasmere isn't much further.
The Lake House Jetty Spa, a treatment room hoisted three metres into the tree canopy with floor-to-ceiling views over Knipe Tarn.
Staying at the Lake House but want the Michelin tasting menu? Gilpin runs you to the hotel and back, sometimes by Porsche, so you can do justice to the wine pairing.
The two estates have different perks. Only the hotel has in-room hot tubs and the Spice restaurant; only Lake House guests get the private pool and grounds.
With its wild fells and mirror-still lakes, the Lake District is England at its most dramatically beautiful.
