Keswick Launch slipway (Derwentwater)

Derwentwater fills a glacially carved, roughly north-south basin about three miles long and a mile wide, fed by the River Derwent flowing down from the Borrowdale valley and draining north through Keswick towards Bassenthwaite Lake. Four islands sit within it: St Herbert's, the largest, Rampsholme, Lord's Island and the privately tenanted Derwent Island, all visible from the slipway looking south across the water.

The lake and the ancient Atlantic oakwoods that cloak much of its shoreline and the Borrowdale valley sides are both designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and part of the woodland is a National Nature Reserve. Otters use the woodland streams and gullies, red squirrels move through the oakwoods, and the sheltered bays hold wintering wildfowl. Derwentwater is also one of the last strongholds of the vendace, the UK's rarest freshwater fish.

Lord's Island, within sight of the slipway, holds the low stone footings of a house built for the Earls of Derwentwater around 1460. The Earls left the island around 1623 and the house fell into disrepair; the earldom itself was forfeited to the Crown in 1715 after the Jacobite uprising. The island is now a no-paddle zone that protects nesting geese, and the ruins cannot be reached from the water.