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“Lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake/ And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat/ Went heaving through the water like a swan,” remembered William Wordsworth in The Prelude, his epic autobiographical masterpiece. The romantic poet was describing his spiritual awakening as a young man in a stolen rowing boat.
When I dipped my oars into the same body of water in the Lake District last summer, I was in a craft hired from Windermere Lake Cruises, surrounded by small electric motorboats and steamers full of waving holidaymakers, and went heaving through the water like a bewildered walrus.
But that was just fine because my spiritual awakening had been six hours earlier – and in England’s largest lake, not on it. The same lake that was described on Channel 4 News just weeks earlier as an “open sewer”.
The dramatic soundbite introduced a report on the life-threatening E. coli infection that seven-year-old Rex Earley contracted after kayaking with his family last year. Two local wild swimmers also discussed serious conditions they attributed to pollution in the lake. Thankfully, all have since recovered.
This visit to Windermere was motivated by the urge to see for myself if the jewel in the Lake District’s crown, and bellwether for the state of the national park I fell in love with as a child, is still as magical as I remember, or is now the toxic no-go zone some elements of the media would have us believe.
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There have been concerns about pollution in the Windermere catchment since the mid-19th century, but the dramatic shift in the public imagination from Wordsworth’s lake “shining clear/ Among the hoary mountains” to a “sewage-clogged beauty-spot” began in earnest during the early 2020s.
Press coverage from that point has majored on the excessive and illegal discharge of untreated human waste into the lake – 37 million gallons between 2021 and 2023, according to one BBC investigation into water company United Utilities (who prefer the term “potentially non-compliant” releases).
Blue-green algal blooms caused by phosphorus deposits from fertiliser run-off have also featured and present a threat to aquatic wildlife, but it is the high levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli) and intestinal enterococci (IE) bacteria from faecal matter in the water that make for life-threatening illnesses and damning scatological headlines.
Affable 57-year-old Geordie Pete Kelly is pulling on his wetsuit on the eastern shore of the lake. He owns outdoor adventure company Swim the Lakes and freestyles here first thing in the morning whenever he is not accompanied by clients or engaged taking them around other lakes and tarns.
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At that time he might encounter English Channel swimmers (at 10.5 miles long, Windermere is almost exactly half the distance), triathlon athletes, and those training for or participating in major open-water events such as the Great North Swim or Epic Lakes Swim Windermere.
These are mostly organised, risk-managed swims, and Kelly is similarly cautious. He says: “There are certain hotspots for pollution around the lake but I take precautions to avoid them.”
In 2025, the Big Windermere Survey revealed a peak in levels of bacteria during summer months and demanded that the issue of “poor” water be addressed. Influential pressure group Save Windermere backed the findings and, while also successfully prompting the government to lean on the privatised utilities, continues to highlight several other issues.
“Many people swim in Windermere regularly without problems,” states the organisation. “And we strongly believe that connecting with nature is important for both physical and mental wellbeing but the stories [concerning members of the public becoming ill] cannot be ignored.”
To that end, Save Windermere is calling for pollution risk forecasting to be introduced, a clear public information system to communicate that information via an online portal and targeted sampling across the lake – not just in the four designated bathing water sites at Lakeside YMCA, Millerground Landing, Rayrigg Meadow and Fellfoot.
Kelly is at pains to stress his “full support” for the Save Windermere campaign to stop the dumping of sewage in the lake. “The more pressure brought to bear on the water companies the better,” he insists. “It is just the hammering of the everyday perception of the water quality in Windermere which I think is unfair.”
The Ro hotel dates from the 1880s when it was known as the “Windermere Hydro” and, if the pictures on the walls are anything to go by, anxious-looking Victorians paid to have various uncomfortable but vogueish “water cures”. Fortunately, the revamped hotel now prefers pampering the guests and serving up memorable full English breakfasts.
It had just gone 8am and we were late for a rendezvous with Kelly at the Jetty Museum car park to go “adventure swimming” near the Rayrigg Meadow bathing-water site. A quick change into a wetsuit and safety talk later, the vast historic lake lay silent before us. Clear and cold. Perfect for skimming stones.
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Less than a couple of minutes after setting off in the direction of Hen Holme, a small and densely forested island in Bowness Bay, the rhythm of the stroke had taken over and I found myself oblivious to the temperature and yet weirdly hyper vigilant. The steeps and cliffs from The Prelude still standing sentry, I was adrift in a Wordsworthian sense sublime.
And then, suddenly, the surface and the moment were breached by a huge olive-green pike. It paused and flexed mid-air, less than six inches away, to look into my soul before slipping back into the depths and flashing its creamy belly as it made for the reeds to continue its surveillance at a discrete remove.
“Did you see that?” asked Kelly, a few feet ahead but looking behind him. Not only had I seen it, I felt connected to it and knew at that moment that if I lived near here, I would also swim in this frequently maligned and traduced body of water, where the land pauses, gathers the sky and keeps it every single morning.
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Relaxing after the two hour “thermal journey” promised by the Brimstone Spa at the Langdale Hotel, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been as detoxified or clean. Or pleasantly exhausted by just watching Great Langdale Beck power past our “Waterside room” on its own journey to Lake Windermere, as it has done since the end of the last Ice Age.
There is a reassuring continuity here, but this is not to deny the urgent need to stop sewage being dumped in the lake; to place ticks next to every box on the Save Windermere agenda.
The aim must be to challenge Lake Annecy in France for the honorary title of Europe’s cleanest lake, but until that happens pollution updates are not the only news stories in this glorious part of the world.
In one afternoon, you can hire e-bikes from Biketreks Grizedale, take in a sculpture trail, go forest-bathing and then check-out the brilliant new Grizedale Observatory; rewilding is taking place on the Skiddaw plateau; Britain’s rarest birds of prey, ospreys, have just successfully reared three chicks near Bassenthwaite Lake; water voles have returned to the Haweswater area.
There is good news everywhere if you look for it, and ultimately Lake Windermere is much more than just another emotive landscape feature with name recognition enough to qualify as a political football.
It remains, and will always be, the magical place Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey felt compelled to immortalise in verse, JMW Turner attempted to capture in his sketchbooks and on canvas, and to which, according to her 2020 Folklore album bonus track The Lakes, Taylor Swift dreams of being transported.
Where to stay
The Ro
In Bowness right on the edge of Windermere, The Ro has beautiful views of the lake and a Hydro Wellness Club for both fitness and relaxation.
The Langdale Hotel
On the 35-acre Langdale Estate, guests are offered the choice of hotel or self-catered accommodation, along with the adult-only Brimstone Spa, the Stove Restaurant, and a traditional Lakeland pub.
Bill’s trip was supported by Visit Lake District and Hyundai Motor UK.
For more information on safe-bathing go to www.savewindermere.com