Kinniside, Cleator, CA23 3AG

Most people who dream about running a holiday let business in the Lake District picture the same thing. A beautiful location, a property portfolio with genuine character, and enough of the right kind of guests to make it all work. The problem is usually that the popular locations are too saturated and the quieter ones are just too unknown or off the beaten track. Ennerdale solves that problem rather neatly.

It's a valley in the unspoiled western Lakes - genuinely peaceful, genuinely beautiful, and genuinely well-established with the kind of guests who come back year after year. 

Serious walkers, cyclists and outdoor lovers who want the real Lake District rather than the Kendal Mint Cake version. Ennerdale Water, one of the quietest lakes in the whole National Park, is a twenty-minute walk from the front door. The Gather café and a couple of pubs in Ennerdale Bridge village are fifteen minutes in the other direction. It's actually not remote - it just feels like it ought to be.

Bank House Farm is the anchor of the whole operation. A substantial, characterful three/four-bedroom farmhouse with a multi-fuel stove in the lounge, a stylish flagstone shaker kitchen, two reception rooms and fell views that follow you from room to room - including, memorably, from the rolltop bath. It's a proper family home with enough space for everyone, and the kind of period character that makes you want to stay rather than renovate.

Next door, Acorn Cottage and Holly Cottage are both established, trading holiday lets with proven track records in this location. Acorn is a beautifully characterful cosy little one-bed with exposed beams and an original open fireplace - the kind of cottage that fills a booking calendar on atmosphere alone. 

Holly is a two-bed with two beamed reception rooms, a wood-burning stove and original shutters on every bedroom window - with more space than guests expect, which tends to generate exactly the kind of five star reviews that fill the following season.

Between the farmhouse and the two cottages, the business case is already in place. But there's more here if you want it. Subject to separate negotiation, there is also another two-bed cottage, a stylish three-bed converted barn and the option on around fifty acres of land with summer grazing rights for the fells. 

Taken together, the potential to grow this into something considerably larger is real - though the three core properties work perfectly well as a standalone lifestyle business without any of it.

This kind of opportunity rarely presents itself in a location this good. Three properties, one valley, a loyal guest base that already knows where to find you - and a farmhouse with a rolltop bath and fell views to come home to at the end of the day.

If this sounds like the lifestyle move you've been dreaming of, get in touch to arrange a viewing.

Bank House Farm is a proper family home in a part of the Lakes that rewards the people who find it - spacious, characterful and set in a valley that’s still something of a well kept secret.