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The Lake District by train

By Lee McCoy — station positions from OpenStreetMap, walking distances measured along OpenStreetMap’s paths, bus stops from our own published set. · 171 of 214 Wainwrights with a Strava-matched summit

Can you get to the Lake District by train?

Yes, to the edge of it. No railway crosses the fells, so the last part of every trip is a bus, a branch line or your own feet, and the station you arrive at decides which fells you can reach. Oxenholme Lake District is where the main line drops you for Windermere and the south, Penrith for Ullswater and the north-east, and Ravenglass for the western valleys. The page follows the day in order:

1. Pick your stationby where you want to walk
2. Get theretimes from seven cities
3. Off the trainwhat meets it, what you can walk to
4. The walks that fitand get you back for the bus
5. The train homelast trains, and how often they ran to time

1. Pick your station by where you want to walk

The four stations suit very different days. The one with the most fells in walking distance has no bus in our data, and the one with none relies on its buses. Each card takes you to that station in step 3.

• South and centralWindermere

  Ambleside, Grasmere, Langdale and Coniston. Of the bus services we hold, more stop within 400 m of Windermere than of any other station: five, at 27 stops.

  5 fells on footBuses here: 505, 508, 516, 555, 599
• East: KentmereStaveley

  You can walk the Kentmere round straight from the platform. It is the nearest National Rail station to more fells than any other.

  6 fells on footBuses here: 555
• North and north-eastPenrith

  Ullswater, Blencathra and the northern fells, all by bus. There is nothing to walk to from the station, so the buses are the way in.

  Nothing walkable from the platformBuses here: 508, 509, X4
• WestRavenglass

  Eskdale and the western valleys, by the narrow-gauge railway to Dalegarth. Of the 66 stations in Cumbria we measured, Dalegarth has the most fells within 5 km on foot: 26.

  26 fells on footNo bus we hold

The cards do not say how long the bus or the walk to the start takes. We know which buses meet each station and how far each fell is on foot, but not the time from station to trailhead, so we do not guess one.

2. Get there from where you are

Find your city and read across to the station you picked. A time on its own is a direct train. A time with a station under it means one change there, and it is the fastest real journey that week. A dash means no direct train and no journey with a single change.

Derived from the National Rail timetable for the week beginning 13 September 2026: 18 of the 28 city-and-station pairs have a direct train. Times vary within a week: London to Oxenholme takes anywhere from 2h 39m to 3h 49m. Checked by Lee on 14 September 2026. Powered by National Rail Enquiries.

No fares or departure times here. Both change too often to print; every figure above is a journey length taken from one week of the timetable. For the train you will actually catch, use the live boards at the top of this page, which refresh every two minutes.

3. Off the train: what meets it, and what you can walk to

For each of the four stations: the fells you can walk to within 5 km, nearest first, measured along real paths rather than in straight lines; and the bus services that stop by the station; and, where we have checked them, the cab firms Traintaxi lists. Each fell page says how far its start is from the nearest bus stop.

Changing at Oxenholme Lake District. It has no section above, but it is where the main line meets the Windermere branch.

Cabs: Oxenholme Lake District station is served by a taxi rank or a cab office. Check availability before travelling, and pre-book if necessary. Consider using the following local operators or alternative station: Blue Star 01539 723670; ADL 01539 736391; Mace 015395 61580; or Kendal. As Traintaxi supplies them, read 4 October 2026. Traintaxi leaves “taxis” out of a firm’s name. Lee checked them on 4 October 2026. © Traintaxi Limited, 2000-2026. Using cabs in the UK.

4. The walks that fit, with a bus back to the station

What makes or breaks a day out is whether there is a bus back. So for each of our walks we ask one question: if you leave the station at a given time, can you finish the walk at a steady pace and still catch a scheduled bus back to the station? The walks are grouped by how much time you would have to spare, and each one shows its buses out, the walk and the bus back. Pick a station, a day and a time, and the answer changes to match; without JavaScript it stays on the one shown.

All of this uses scheduled times from the operators’ published summer timetable, valid to 1 November 2026, so delays are not counted. Getting there may take up to three buses. Getting back uses one direct bus whose last departure Lee has checked against the operator’s boards; where there is none, the walk is listed as reachable but with no checked way home. The times themselves are on the stop and route pages, with the dates they were checked. It ends at the station: whether a train then gets you home is not checked here, so for your date and destination use National Rail’s journey planner.

Answers are held for Windermere, Staveley and Penrith. Ravenglass: no stop in the eight bus timetables we hold is near this station.

5. The train home

Plan your day backwards from the last train back the way you came, south or north. On the day itself, go by the live boards at the top of this page rather than the table: the table is the timetable, the boards show what is actually running.

Worth knowing: Penrith’s last weekday train north left within 5 minutes of the timetable on 16 of 59 days, 19 June 2026 to 16 September 2026. Consider the train before it.

National Rail timetable (the DTD feed), read 12 September 2026; checked by Lee on 12 September 2026 against the operators' published timetables (Northern for Windermere, Staveley and Ravenglass; Avanti West Coast and TransPennine Express for Penrith). A later timetable replaces these once it has been checked the same way. Powered by National Rail Enquiries.

On time means within 5 minutes of the timetable, 19 June 2026 to 16 September 2026, from Historical Service Performance data from National Rail Enquiries and Rail Delivery Group, read 17 September 2026. A figure disappears when the timetable changes or the read is more than 100 days old.

Questions people ask

What this page does not tell you

The train times are one week's timetable, not a promise. Step 5 shows the first arrival and the last departure for the week shown, and a person checked each one against the operator's own timetable before it went up. When a new timetable comes out, we take the times down until the new ones have been checked the same way. The hours between first and last train, less a 30-minute margin, are shown alongside; whether a particular route fits in them is on its fell page, allowing for the walk to the start.

• Distances are to the start of the walk, along mapped paths, not to the summit. Dalegarth is 2.8 km from the start of a Scafell walk, and the mountain is a full day beyond that.
• A distance is not a recommendation. Walking 4 km before you even reach the hill adds real time and effort to the day.
• Five stations have no section in step 3, on purpose. Carlisle, Whitehaven, Ulverston, Arnside and Oxenholme have no fell within 5 km on foot and no bus stop we hold within reach of the platform, so there is nothing to say about them as places to start a walk. Oxenholme is still where most journeys change, and its live board is at the top of this page (its cab firms are at the end of step 3).

Buses answer the other half of this question, and there are far more of them: the bus map shows which of the 598 fells a bus reaches, with the walking distance to each stop.

37 station-to-fell distances, all measured along paths. Updated 31 August 2026.