2 Best Sights in Ambleside, The Lake District

Ambleside's fine local museum is a scholarly place, focusing on influential German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) and Beatrix Potter. Schwitters lived out his final years in Ambleside, and the museum now has a room filled with his art. The museum also shows the less well-known aspects of Beatrix Potter, revealing her work as an important scientific and intellectual figure. Exhibits shed light on her as a naturalist, mycologist, sheep breeder, and conservationist. A large collection of her natural-history watercolors and a huge number of photographic portraits can be viewed by appointment in the excellent library upstairs.

This tiny 17th-century stone building, once an apple store, perches on an arched stone bridge spanning Stone Beck. It may have been built here to avoid land tax. The National Trust cares for this much-photographed building. There are guided tours Thursday at 11:30 am and 2:30 pm.