Moss Force

The walk in

From the parking area on the crest of Newlands Hause, a clear grassy path leads toward the falls — you can see them from the car. It's five to ten minutes to the foot of the lower and middle tiers, on ground that's uneven and often wet but short enough for almost anyone to manage. That's the walk: this is the district's most accessible big fall, and an easy add-on to any drive between Keswick and Buttermere.

An honest warning about going higher: eroded scrambly paths climb steeply beside the falls toward the upper tier. The ground there is steep, loose and slippery, with real fall potential onto rock — people get into trouble on it every year in ordinary walking shoes. The view from the foot is the best of it anyway; if you do climb, treat it as a scramble on bad ground, not a path. In winter the frozen fall is a graded ice climb — which tells you what the angle is like.

When to go

Timing is everything at Moss Force. The beck drains Buttermere Moss, the boggy plateau on Robinson's shoulder — a sponge that fills fast in rain and empties fast after it. Come during or within a day or two of proper rain and the fall is at full power; come after a dry fortnight and there's barely a trickle. It faces the afternoon light, and in a westerly gale the water can blow visibly sideways off the crag — a spectacle in itself from the safety of the car. Check our conditions page before making a special trip.

The setting

Newlands Hause is the saddle between two beautiful, very different valleys: pastoral, quiet Newlands on one side and the deep glacial trench of Buttermere on the other. The fall drops straight onto the pass, so the whole scene — crag, cascade, road, valley — arrives at once as you crest the hause. Moss Beck becomes Keskadale Beck below, running down Newlands beneath Knott Rigg and Ard Crags.

The name & its story

The "Moss" is literal: Buttermere Moss, the peat bog on Robinson's shoulder, is the fall's reservoir — the same bog that soaks every walker who crosses it (as our Robinson page honestly admits). The fall's celebrity witness is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who deliberately waited for a storm in September 1802 and climbed beside the fall in spate, writing breathlessly to Sara Hutchinson of looking down into the cataract — "What a sight it is to look down on such a Cataract!" His stormy visit remains the best advice on when to come. Wainwright routed his Memorial Walk past the falls, and Thomas West's 1778 Guide to the Lakes was describing the crag's "thousand chasms" a generation before Coleridge got wet here.

Family, dogs & accessibility

A great family stop exactly because it's short — but hold to two rules: stay at the foot of the falls (not the eroded scramble beside them), and mind that the parking and path sit on a blind road crest where cars, bikes and sheep share the tarmac. Not a pushchair path (short but rough and often boggy), though the fall is genuinely visible from beside the car, which makes it one of the few big Lakeland falls a wheelchair user can actually see well. Dogs on leads — open sheep country beside a road.

The fells above

Robinson owns the fall — Moss Beck rises on its boggy shoulder — and the ridge across the hause carries Knott Rigg and Ard Crags, one of the best short ridge walks in the north-west fells. High Snockrigg, Robinson's Buttermere-side knott, overlooks the pass. For every other fall worth your rain-day, see the Lake District waterfalls guide.

Getting there & parking

Without a car: The nearest stations as the crow flies are Corkickle (22 km away) and Parton (22 km away). The bus map has every stop we hold.

Newlands Hause is on the narrow pass road between Buttermere village and the Newlands valley (for Keswick). Parking is informal verge space on the crest — room for maybe 15 cars, no marked bays, no facilities — and it fills on fine weekends, spate days and every sunny bank holiday. Park fully off the tarmac (the road stays busy) and don't block the passing places. No bus crosses the hause; the nearest services run to Buttermere village, a steep 1.5 km below.