The coloured glass
Panels that revive an eighteenth-century idea: look through yellow and it is summer, through dark blue and it is a moonlit night.
Oscar Taylor — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Oscar Taylor — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Oscar Taylor — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Oscar Taylor — CC BY-SA 2.0
In the 1790s, decades before anyone had a camera, the Reverend William Braithwaite built a room on the wooded hillside above Windermere whose only purpose was looking. The first tourists to the Lakes would pause here and take in the water through panes of tinted glass: light green for spring, yellow for summer, orange for autumn, pale blue for winter, dark blue for a moonlit night, lilac for a thunderstorm. Four seasons in a minute, without getting your feet wet. Viewing stations fell out of fashion and the building slid into ruin from the late nineteenth century; the National Trust brought it back in a two-year project that finished in October 2015, and the coloured panels are back in the upper viewing room. What you find today is an elegant, partly roofed ruin. A few steps lead up to a timber platform framed by the coloured glass, and the whole lake opens out through it: Bowness and its boats on the far shore, the eastern fells behind, Belle Isle almost within reach. It is open around the clock, free, and needs no ticket or booking. It is also very small. The honest thing to know before you go is that the stop itself lasts about twenty minutes, and the real value is in getting here and in what lies around it, not in the building. Getting here is half the point. From Bowness, head to Ferry Nab (about a mile south of the centre) and take the car-and-passenger ferry across the lake, a crossing of roughly ten minutes that runs all day, every twenty minutes or so, year-round apart from Christmas Day and Boxing Day; from April 2026 the fare is £1.50 on foot and £8 per car, card only, no booking. From the Ferry House landing on the west shore a woodland path climbs to the station in five to ten minutes. It is fine for children who walk, awkward with a pushchair, and the final steps inside the building mean carrying the little ones. In July and August cars can queue for the ferry for close to an hour, so cross on foot and leave the car in Bowness, or drive round via Ambleside and Hawkshead (about 40 minutes) if you are heading to the west shore anyway. At the foot of the slope, Joey's Café occupies the old courtyard and runs roughly 10:00 to 16:00 in season, next to the National Trust's Ash Landing car park (around £5 to £7.50 depending on stay, free for members). Treat the station as the start of a half-day rather than its goal: the level west-shore path runs about four miles north to Wray Castle and suits bikes and families, or walk two miles inland to Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's house. In winter the station is open but the light is gone by about four and the café may be shut; a clear afternoon, when the sun lights up the eastern shore, is the moment for the photograph you came for.
Panels that revive an eighteenth-century idea: look through yellow and it is summer, through dark blue and it is a moonlit night.
The platform looks straight across the lake to Bowness and the eastern fells, at its best for photos in the afternoon.
A short ferry hop, then a level path for families and bikes all the way to Wray Castle, or a short walk to Beatrix Potter's house.
Ash Landing, Far Sawrey, Ambleside LA22 0LP
No. The building is small and the stop lasts about twenty minutes. It earns its place as part of a half-day on the west shore: the lakeshore path to Wray Castle, Hill Top at Near Sawrey, or a wander round Hawkshead. If your time in Bowness is short, a lake cruise gives you much the same view with less effort.
Children who can walk enjoy the ferry and the coloured glass, but the path up from the landing is a rough climb and the building has steps and no lift, so the pushchair stays at the bottom. The courtyard café is a sensible place for one parent to wait with the little ones.
