Qualla: Ullswater

Ullswater: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother William were walking back along the western shore of Ullswater after visiting their friend Thomas Clarkson - the anti-slavery campaigner whose Cumbrian house, Eusemere, sat just south of Pooley Bridge. Dorothy stopped to write in her journal. "I never saw daffodils so beautiful," she wrote. "They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced." Two years later her brother would turn that walk into a poem - the one with the cloud and the host of golden daffodils - that has been taught to more schoolchildren over the past two centuries than any other piece of English verse. The daffodils were here. The lake was here. They are both still here.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Ullswater: A Lake Made by Three Glaciers

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ullswater is the second-largest lake in the Lake District - about seven miles long, three-quarters of a mile wide, with a maximum depth of sixty-three metres - and one of the most strikingly shaped. It is a Z, or an elongated S, depending on how you describe it: three distinct re...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ullswater: Wolf's Lake, or Maybe Ulf's

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jenkins, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name's origin is genuinely uncertain. The leading scholarly guess is that it derives from Ulfr, an Old Norse personal name (also the noun for wolf), plus the Old English waeter influenced by the Norse vatn - giving "Ulf's lake." Several historical figures named Ulf have been ...

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Image: Bob Jenkins | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ullswater: Steamers, Kaisers, and Anti-Slavery

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit michael ely, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ullswater Steamers fleet still runs all year. The boats were originally working vessels, from the 1850s carrying mail and miners and goods along the lake to and from the Greenside lead mine at Glenridding. When the mine closed in 1962, the steamers reinvented themselves as to...

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Image: michael ely | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ullswater: Bluebird at 200 mph

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Strider52, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 23 July 1955, the British speed-record pursuer Donald Campbell drove a jet-propelled hydroplane called Bluebird K7 down the calm waters of Ullswater at 202.32 mph, setting a new world water speed record. The lake was chosen for its length, its straightness through the central ...

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Image: Strider52 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ullswater: Aira Force, Geese and the View

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Graham, CC BY-SA 2.0. Midway along the western shore the Aira Beck falls down a wooded ravine in a series of cascades known as Aira Force. The National Trust owns the falls and the surrounding land. The path through the gorge is short, atmospheric, and remarkably loud after rain. Nearby Lyulph's Tower...

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Image: Michael Graham | CC BY-SA 2.0