Ullswater
Ullswater, in the north east of the Lake District, is the second longest lake in the region and offers all that the visitor desires: a ferry service, sailing, diving, rowing and motorboats
(both of which can be hired by the hour). 
These facilities are all available on
Lake Windermere, but Ullswater is blessed with finer immediate surrounding scenery, with magnificent fells on both sides.
Ullswater takes its name from an early Norse settler, L'Ulf, and was once a working lake, used to transport miners and ore. William Wordsworth once wrote of Ullswater: "the happiest combination of beauty and grandeur, which any of the lakes affords"; indeed it was whilst visiting the lake in 1802 that Wordsworth came across the daffodils that inspired the most famous of his poems -
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils"
The serpentine Ullswater curves through huge fells that are a dramatic sight to behold, and the fine ring of mountains at the southern end includes St. Sunday Crag, Fairfield and Helvellyn, the most frequently-climbed mountain in Lakeland. The shores of Ullswater are dotted with beautiful woods of native oak, birch and hazel, and this surrounding grandeur is matched by the lake transport; the lake steamers have been in operation since 1859, and to sail on Lady of the Lake, Raven or Lady Dorothy is to experience Ullswater at its best.
On the western shore, approximately midway up the lake, is a National Trust car park from which visitors can walk through glorious woodland to the impressive waterfall of Aira Force. The villages around Ullswater - Patterdale and Glenridding to the south and Pooley Bridge at the northern tip - offer fine hotels, bed & breakfast accommodation and shops supplying food and hiking gear.