Shopping

The Village Shop, in Braithwaite, is your nearest shop. It’s open every day from eight till six and carries a good range of groceries, snacks and souvenirs. You can order your newspaper the day before for collection and if you want a specific cut of meat, for example, they’ll order that for you from a wonderful butchers shop in Cockermouth. Just call 017687 78157.

Keswick is a great little town for shopping, with a far wider range than you’d expect for a town of its size. For that “big shop”, there’s the Co-op as you come into town, while there’s a large and wonderful Booth’s just round the corner, with many exotic and special foods, in-store deli, fishmonger and butcher, café and bookshelves. There are convenience stores at the garage on the way into town (Spar) and also on St John’s Street, opposite the Square Orange café (Premier), and on Shorley Lane (Spar). Thomason’s, on St John’s Street is a great local butcher.

There’s any number of outdoor clothing and footwear stores, but we’d especially recommend George Fisher, just off Lake Road for boot fitting and boot hire. The Post Office is on Bank Street. Lakeland Décor, also on Bank Street, is good for all sorts of hardware. Market day brings all kinds of food and other craft stalls to town every Saturday year-round and Thursdays, all year except January. There are lots of galleries and craft shops, the famous Friar’s sweet shop and Bookends, which carries a good stock of both local and general interest books, fiction and non-fiction.

Cockermouth also has a wide range of individual shops, antique salesrooms, and a Sainsbury superstore. Other centres within reasonable driving distance are Penrith, Ambleside and Windermere.