One of my other favourite areas when visiting the Lakes is the walk around Tarn Hows, just a couple of miles North East of the small village of Coniston. It is probably one of the most popular tourist destinations in the whole of the Lake District and it is easy to see why. The tarn we see today used to be three separate smaller tarns in the 1800’s, called, namely Low, Middle and High Tarn. It was in 1862 that James Marshall who owned the estate and land set about building a dam in order to raise the water level, the result is what we see today. The land was eventually bought by Beatrix Potter who sold half of the estate to the National Trust in 1929 and bequeathed the rest of the state to the trust in her will. In 1965 the area was designated as a Sight of Specific Scientific Interest. There is a pleasant flatish 2 mile circular walk around the shoreline which starts and finishes in the car park where there is usually an ice cream van, B & P used to love an ice cream after their walk around the lake and always made a b line for it before getting back into the car.