Windermere

Windermere needs 2 days: a cruise on England's largest lake on one, and a visit to Hill Top, Beatrix Potter's farm that inspired her Peter Rabbit tales, on the other. May-September brings the best weather for outdoor activities. It's mid-to-high priced, with boutique lodging geared toward weekend tourism from Manchester and Liverpool. The Lake District, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017, inspired Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, who lived here his whole life, and its landscape of glacial lakes surrounded by green hills is considered the symbolic origin of the British conservation movement.