Esthwaite Water is one of the smaller and lesser known
lakeA lake is a terrain feature , a body of liquid on the surface of a world that is localized to the bottom of basin and moves slowly if it moves at all. Another definition is, a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size that is surrounded by land...
s in the
Lake DistrictThe Lake District, also known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a rural area in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes and its mountains , and its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth and the Lake Poets.The central and...
national parkThe national parks of England and Wales are areas of relatively undeveloped and scenic landscape that are designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949...
in northern
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It is situated between the much larger lakes of
WindermereWindermere is the largest natural lake in England. It has been one of the country’s most popular places for holidays and summer homes since 1847, when the Kendal and Windermere Railway built a branch line to it...
and
Coniston WaterConiston Water in Cumbria, England is the third largest lake in the English Lake District. It is five miles long, half a mile wide, has a maximum depth of 184 feet , and covers an area of 1.89 square miles . The lake has an elevation of 143 feet above sea level...
, in the traditional county of
LancashireLancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. However, Lancaster is still considered to be the county town...
; since 1974 in the administrative county of
CumbriaCumbria is a shire county in the North West of England. Cumbria came into existence as a county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972...
. To the north is the village of
HawksheadHawkshead is a village in the Lake District, England. It is one of the main tourist honeypots in the South Lakeland area, and is dependent on the local tourist trade...
and to the west is
Grizedale ForestGrizedale Forest is a 24.47 km² area of woodland in the Lake District of North West England, located to the east of Coniston Water and to the south of Hawkshead. It comprises a number of hills, small tarns and the settlements of Grizedale and Satterthwaite...
.
The lake covers around and is known for its excellent
fishingFishing is the activity of catching fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
, particularly
troutTrout are a number of species of freshwater and saltwater fish belonging to the Salmoninae subfamily of the Salmonidae family. Salmon belong to some of the same genera as trout but, unlike most trout, most salmon species spend almost all their lives in salt water...
and pike. It has been designated as a
site of special scientific interestA Site of Special Scientific Interest or SSSI is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based...
.
The lake was mentioned as the location where
William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
conversed with a friend in Wordsworth's poem, "Expostulation and Reply," part of Wordsworth's
Lyrical BalladsLyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...
. Wordsworth also mentions it in his
PreludeThe Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind is an autobiographical, "philosophical" poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he was 28, and worked over the rest of it for his long life without publishing it...
of 1805 at line 570: "From Esthwaite's neighbouring lake the splitting ice".