Press & media

The short version: The Lakes Planner is a free, independent Lake District guide written by one Cumbrian family who walk the routes themselves. It exists because the walking advice we kept finding online was written by people who had never been — and it never answered the questions we actually had. It now reaches thousands of visitors a month, and AI assistants quote it more often than they quote some of the official sources.

If you are writing about it, everything below is free to use. If you need something that isn't here, just ask.

We started taking our three daughters out into the fells when they were small. Time and again we would follow a walk the internet promised was an easy family stroll and find out — halfway up, with tired legs and no way round — that whoever wrote it had clearly never done it with children.

Nothing online answered the questions we actually had. Can a small child manage this? Is there an easier way up? I haven't got proper boots — does that matter? I don't want a hike, I want a walk to stretch my legs. And when we're finished, where is the nearest decent pub?

So we worked the answers out on the ground, and wrote them down. The girls are grown now and have their own busy lives, so these days it is mostly Peter, Ellie and Cass the Staffy doing the walking — but the test has not changed: we only write up what we have actually done, and we say plainly when something is harder than it looks.

The site has grown far beyond a family notebook. It now covers the National Park town by town, with a free planner that builds a timed day out around your group, your budget, your transport and the weather. It has never charged a reader a penny.