For all its haute cuisine and gourmet tapas bars, it's the simple pleasures that make Windermere wonderful. A dark amber pint of Hartley's XB from t'wood, a floury barm cake stuffed with Lancashire cheese, a tablet of mint cake, and - best of all - a double cone of English Lakes ice cream on Bowness Pier.
I seem to recall that Bowness styles herself "Queen of the Lakes", but "Duchess" would be more apt. The town is approached through restrained pretty countryside of greenest green, its fields contained by perfect drystone walls. In the polite distance, shaven- headed mountains add a sense of the dangerous outdoors.
On its doorstep, flower gardens, grand old hotels and camp Edwardian villas offer serene views of the lady that is the Lake. Discreetly, ineffably, the Duchess bullies you with her manners. For all her breeding, Bowness can't restrain me from licking the flipping heck out of my Double Jersey ice cream, or buying a second cone and indecently assaulting that, too.
English Lakes ice cream is a truly local product made by Peter and Frances Fryer in a tiny dairy on Gilthwaiterigg Road in Kendal. They only use organic Jersey milk, all of which comes from the cows on Swarthmoor Hall Farm at Ulverston. They employ half-a-dozen people to make and distribute the product around Cumbria, and that's pretty much the only place you can find it. "We don't want to be Wall's," notes Frances, drily.
English Lakes have a small take-home business, but most of their ice cream goes to the "scooping trade". I scoot over to the Cushion Huts on Bowness Promenade, a row of sheds where Victorians rested their posteriors and covered their legs while taking in health-promoting views of the lake. The huts now house a rowing- boat hire business and Hazel's ice cream scooping shop. Hazel is chatty and tries to press me to some apple crumble, but I have discovered that the perfect English Lakes mixture is Double Jersey on top of Thunder and Lightning. The former is just milk, cream, butter and sugar - no vanilla, note - the latter, the same run through with good chocolate and chewy chunks of cinder toffee.
The combination tastes altogether of childhood treats, bawdy pleasures and posh quality.
On Bowness Pier, in bright hot May sun, you see larch-built Edwardian rowing boats with names like Gypsy and Gay, and the sleek old steamer discharging her passengers. Belle Isle is over the clean khaki water, out of which rise tree-thick hills on the Hawkshead bank. Boys in sailboats tack and the chuckle of day cruisers melds with crying gulls and the splash of swans. It's all very Swallows And Amazons. lakesicecream.com. Oxenholme Lake District station is 3 hours from London Euston with Virgin Trains (08457 222333, virgintrains.co.uk).
