Cumbria, England

Glebe Road slipway (Bowness-on-Windermere)

Parking — Two Westmorland and Furness Council car parks sit on Glebe Road beside the bay: Glebe Road car park, with 124 general spaces, 8 disabled and 7 motorcycle spaces, and Braithwaite Fold car park. Both are chargeable from 8am to 8pm daily, with no overnight parking for motorhomes and no acceptance of Westmorland and Furness residents' permits.

Access — Windermere carries a general right of navigation, and no published restriction limits who may launch an unpowered board or kayak from Glebe Road. No gates, barriers or opening hours are published for the slipway itself.

Season — Bowness Bay public toilets, near the Tourist Information office (LA23 3HG), are open 9am to 6pm, extended to 9pm in summer. Braithwaite Fold car park toilets (LA23 3HB) are open 24 hours.

Regulations — The Windermere Registration Byelaws 2008 require registration only for a power driven vessel, so paddleboards, canoes and kayaks are not required to register to use the lake. Unpowered craft are still bound by the Windermere Navigation Byelaws 2008, which apply to all vessels, and this launch sits within a 6 mph zone covering Bowness Bay and Belle Isle, stricter than the lake's general 10 mph limit.

This slipway on Glebe Road launches onto Windermere, England's largest natural lake, within Bowness Bay close to the town's promenade and the Windermere Lake Cruises piers.

Windermere is England's largest natural lake: 11.23 miles (18.07 km) long and up to 0.93 miles (1.5 km) wide, formed as a ribbon lake carved out by glaciers after the last ice age. The River Leven drains it at its southern end, and the Brathay, Rothay, Trout Beck and Cunsey Beck feed it. Its maximum depth is given as 67 metres by one source and 64 metres by another.

The lake holds eighteen islands. Belle Isle, the largest at around a kilometre long and 16 hectares, sits immediately west of Bowness Bay, close to this launch. Windermere holds a landlocked population of Arctic charr, a cold-water fish present in the lake since the last ice age, alongside brown trout, pike, perch and eels.

Nearby

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The Bluebird Cafe on the Bay

Café inside the Bowness Bay Information Centre on Glebe Road, run by the Lake District National Park Authority.

Website

Old Pump House

Café on Glebe Road, close to the slipway.

Bowness-on-Windermere Camping and Caravanning Club Site

Public camping and caravan site on Glebe Road, formerly known as Braithwaite Fold; open to tents, caravans, motorhomes and small campervans, not restricted to members or static-caravan owners.

Website

Conditions to check

Boat traffic

Windermere Lake Cruises steamers and launches run scheduled routes from the Bowness piers, immediately beside this launch, to Ambleside and Lakeside; the Windermere Navigation Byelaws give Class V passenger vessels priority over other vessels underway.

Source

Boat traffic

Bowness Bay includes a marina and swinging moorings; the lake as a whole has nearly 800 swinging moorings across 28 areas, for boats up to 14 metres.

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Other

Windermere has recurring blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) blooms, present in the lake year-round at varying levels and sometimes producing toxins. The Environment Agency runs a 24-hour pollution incident hotline, and blooms can be reported through the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology's Bloomin' Algae app.

Other

Windermere is a long, open ribbon lake, and the Lake District National Park Authority advises that wind direction on it can change suddenly.

Source

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