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.... also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region and national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and the Cumbrian mountains, and for its literary associations with Beatrix Potter, John Ruskin, and the Lake Poets.
The Cumbrian mountains, or fells, include England's highest: Scafell Pike (978 m; 3,209 ft), Helvellyn (950 m; 3,120 ft) and Skiddaw (931 m; 3,054 ft).
The region also contains sixteen major lakes. They include Windermere, which with a length of 11 miles (18 km) and an area of 5.69 square miles (14.73 km2) is the longest and largest lake in England, and Wast Water, which at 79 metres (259 ft) is the deepest lake in England.
The Lake District National Park was established in 1951, and covers an area of 2,362 km2 (912 square miles), the bulk of the region. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017.
The Lake District National Park includes all of the central Lake District, though the town of Kendal, some coastal areas and the Cartmel and Furness peninsulas are outside the park boundary. The area was designated a national park on 9 May 1951, a month after the Peak District, the first UK national park. It retained its original boundaries until 2016, when it was extended by 3% to the east, in the direction of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, to incorporate areas land of high landscape value around the Lune Valley.
The national park received 18.14 million tourist visitors in 2022. This equates to 29.15 million tourist days, counting visits of greater than three hours.It is the largest of the thirteen national parks in England and Wales and the second largest in the UK after the Cairngorms National Park. Its aim is to protect the landscape by restricting unwelcome change by industry or commerce. The area of the national park, with the exception of the 2016 extension, was designated a World Heritage Site in 2017 as a cultural landscape. This was the fourth attempt to list the park, after two attempts in the 1980s and one in 2012 failed.
The park is governed by the Lake District National Park Authority, which is based at offices in Kendal. It runs a visitor centre on Windermere at a former country house called Brockhole, Coniston Boating Centre, and information centres. The park authority has 20 members: six appointed by Westmorland and Furness Council, four by Cumberland Council, and ten by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
