THINK Lake District, think water. Whichever way you turn, there’s little hope of escaping the wet stuff says FRANK CORLESS.

The place is swimming in it.

It’s one of the main reasons eight million of us make our way there every year to ‘drink in’ glorious scenery that wouldn’t exist without water.

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So, for a Lakeland business to run dry would be bad enough. When it’s a pub without water you might think Mother Nature had played her strangest trick.

Steve and Karen Edmondson faced the dilemma after they bought the beautiful 18th century Brown Horse Inn, nestling amid rolling hills in the glorious Winster Valley, only five minutes drive from England’s largest natural lake, Windermere.

As business started to improve, the natural spring supplying the pub’s water often couldn’t cope, and the couple had to spend thousands of pounds each month on bottled water as an emergency supplement.

 In the end, they splashed out £15,000 on a borehole, a long, narrow well, to boost supplies.  It was a eureka moment because it worked a treat.

There is now enough water to cope to cope with demands from customers and staff, and from guests staying in nine splendid bedrooms.

As an added bonus, the water is used in the production of lager and bitter by the pub’s own micro brewery, appropriately named after the Winster Valley.

The booze is so popular that bottled versions sell in other pubs, hotels and off licences. I can personally vouch that the taste is great.

But it doesn’t end there. Vegetables and herbs for the Brown Horse’s excellent restaurant are supplied by the inn’s garden, and meat and eggs come from  the family farm only few hundred yards away.

Guests can even book horse and carriage rides around the valley, an enterprise run by Karen and her 83-year-old father, Ken Scowcroft.

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“You have to keep ahead of the game,” said Steve.  “The tourist industry is changing all the time and people are becoming more and more aware of what they want from a holiday, or from having a drink or buying a meal.  We try our best to make everyone happy, and we seem to be doing OK.”

I came across the Brown Horse purely by chance when I used the internet to randomly select three places for overnight stays as part of a journey along Memory Lane, re-visiting picturesque towns and villages, and the mountains and hills, I remembered from my youth.

Steeped in history, the 17th century Queens Head , at Troutbeck, is worth a call if only to feast your eyes on  the oak beamed ceilings, stone-flagged floors, and a magnificent bar that was once a four-poster bed at Appleby Castle. Log fires still burned brightly in the middle of a mini heat wave.  I half expected an Elizabethan coachman to walk through the door, his head tucked under his arm.

Yet, even with a foot firmly embedded in the past, the hotel boasts every modern facility. No expense seems to have been spared to create a warm, colourful experience.  Everywhere shines like a new pin.

I was tired after a long walk on the fells, but a welcoming reception by staff, an excellent hearty meal, and a glass of wonderfully smooth pinot grigio, quickly refreshed me. I slept right through, and couldn’t fault the full English breakfast awaiting me next morning.

My final stop, at the delightfully named Middle Ruddings country inn and restaurant at Braithwaite, near Keswick, run by husband and wife team, Liz and Andy McMaster, provided a terrific finale.

Dating back to 1903, the inn was the most recently built of the hotels I visited, but has a wonderful rustic charm and atmosphere. As many as 70 guests in every 100 make a point of returning.

Among them are retired chartered engineer John Pettigrew, 67, and his wife Janice Pettigrew, from Loughton, in Essex, who are inveterate travellers. You name it, they’ve been there. 

Yet, despite seeing most of the world’s wonders, they have returned to the Lake District every year, bar one, since 1989.   “We just love it here,” said Janice.  “We never get tired of it.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many Lakes ‘regulars’.  And, no doubt, some of them will do as I did before returning home.

Under a cloudless sky, I took a scenic drive (not too difficult to find in the Lakes), and made my way to picture perfect Tarn Hows, where I set out on a six mile walk in the woods above Hawkshead and Coniston.

In mile after mile, I heard only bird songs echoing through the trees, and the crunch of my boots on the gravel underfoot. Nothing appeared to have changed since my first wonderful experiences so long ago.  Bliss?  You bet. 

FACT FILE:

Rates at the Brown Horse Inn range from £48.50 per person per night to £72.50 for dinner, bed & breakfast.  Special offers are available for longer stays. 

Tel: 015394 43443 / Email: steve@thebrownhorseinn.co.uk

The Queens Head rates range from £60.00 per person per night to £95 for dinner, bed & breakfast. Tel: 015394 32174. 

Email: reservations@queensheadtroutbeck.co.uk

Middle Ruddings Country Inn and Restaurant at Braithwaite, nr Keswick,costs £45 per person per night b&b, or £65 per night for dinner, bed & breakfast.

Tel: 017687 78436 /Email: info@middle-ruddings.co.uk