Klook Lake District Trip from Manchester Review

Reviewed by Louise Higgs

I was super excited to receive a trip to the Lake District to review. The trip was through Klook, the activities and experiences booking platform, and included the train ticket (from Manchester Piccadilly to Windermere train station), a voucher for an all-day Stagecoach bus pass, a voucher for a cruise on Lake Windermere and a voucher for our family to visit the World of Beatrix Potter attraction in Bowness-On-Windermere (for full information on what the tour offers, visit www.klook.com/en-GB/activity/20881-lake-district-trip-windermere-wordsworth-grasmere-gingerbread-manchester).

We had to get the train from our local town (Crewe) to Manchester Piccadilly to meet the representative from Manchester Sightseeing. It would have been great if we could have got the train from Crewe to Windermere, rather than having to get the train from Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly and then Manchester Piccadilly to Windermere. I understand that you have to meet the representative to receive the information, including the train tickets etc., but I feel like it would have been easier for us as customers to travel from our home location. It would have been possible for the representative to send out the information and documents in the post, prior to our trip and then followed it up with a phone conversation regarding the documents, so we could have asked any questions if needed. If we had been travelling from further North (for example, somewhere more northern than Windermere) we would have had to of travelled past Windermere to Manchester Piccadilly and then gone back on ourselves. This seems a bit silly and it would save everyone time and money just going directly from a home location.

So, when we arrived at Manchester Piccadilly, our train had been cancelled, so we had to get a later train, which added an hour onto our travel time. This was a bit frustrating, but it couldn’t be helped. We got the train from Manchester Piccadilly, then changed at Preston and went to Oxenholme, then changed at Oxenholme and went to Windermere. It was a long journey with two small children and it actually would have been so much quicker and easier to have just driven there directly. The representative did contact us at 10:45pm the night before our trip to ask if we could get to Manchester Piccadilly at 8:30 instead of 8:55, but our train times from Crewe station would have meant getting there a lot earlier and (as we weren’t given adequate time to prepare for this) we wouldn’t of had time to get everything ready and to the station on time. The representative did apologise for the late message. 

By the time we arrived in Windermere it was just before 12pm, we then had to get a bus to Grasmere (as recommended) to taste the famous gingerbread, but we had just missed the bus, so it would have meant an hours wait for the next bus, so we just decided to walk down into Windermere town.

Once in the town of Windermere, we saw that there was a bus going to Bowness-on-Windermere in 5 minutes time, so we decided to catch the bus to Bowness-on-Windermere and visit the world of Beatrix Potter attraction.

The Beatrix Potter attraction was really good, it was quite short though, it took us about 30 minutes to walk around with a toddler and they had lovely models and scenes with all the characters. It also talked through the various books that Beatrix Potter created and there was a short 5 minute film at the beginning which was just enough for a two year old to sit through.

We then had a lovely meal in The Flying Pig and by that point, there was no time to visit Grasmere or attend the lake cruise on Windermere, which was disappointing. Again, we just missed the bus back to Windermere train station, so we decided to walk, which was a nice 25 minute walk to get some fresh air from all the travelling.

I would recommend the trip, but in my opinion it would have been much better to get the train directly from your home location. 

There was a lot of travelling, which was hard work with two small children (baby and 2 year old, so I would not recommend as a family trip. If the trip was tweaked to include transport from home location, then I would recommend for a family.

Rating: 3/5

RRP: £66 per person (as of 23/12/19)

For more information or to book, visit www.klook.com.