Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The perfect fiscal rule does not exist. Governments need leeway to support their economic goals. But they also need restraints, to prevent a debt spiral. Britain’s chancellor Rachel Reeves is admirably trying to square the circle, as her first Budget approaches on October 30.
The UK’s main target, to have debt as a share of gross domestic product falling in five years, is far too rigid. It can encourage cuts to capital expenditure just to meet it. Raising investment is, however, critical to beating Britain’s low-growth funk. Sensibly, Reeves has committed to balancing day-to-day costs within five years. That allows for more borrowing to invest. But it is not prudent to rely on more debt alone to pay for creaking infrastructure. Tough spending and tax decisions are needed too. Above all, any additional capital spending should be growth-enhancing. That aside, Reeves has little headroom against the existing debt rule anyway.
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How might she create more space? The chancellor has said she wants investment to account for benefits as well as costs. Productive spending adds value to the economy, which the current focus on debt liabilities ignores. The Office for Budget Responsibility might, then, shift its emphasis to something like public sector net financial liabilities, which includes illiquid financial assets such as equity investments and student loans. Another metric, public sector net worth, also includes non-financial assets such as roads and rail.
Monitoring these measures could help to prioritise quality capital spending. But actually targeting them would be problematic. Creditors are concerned about debt serviceability. Infrastructure, for instance, cannot easily be liquidated to meet obligations. Valuing assets is fraught with measurement difficulties, too. Using these less established measures could create over £50bn in extra headroom, but that may spook gilt markets, which seem willing to stomach only £10bn-20bn more in borrowing. If the chancellor punts on this route, she must show restraint.
New balance sheet targets could also be a breach of Labour’s manifesto commitment to have “debt” falling in five years. If that means sticking to the existing debt rule, Reeves would have little room. Indeed, with the party’s ill-advised promise not to touch around 75 per cent of the tax base, only cosmetic interim options for raising investment space in this Budget might remain. That includes tweaking the definition of debt, by excluding the Bank of England’s losses from asset sales and policy banks, like the National Wealth Fund.
Britain is better off moving to a more holistic analysis of debt sustainability. This would spotlight conventional metrics — such as the debt ratio, interest payments, and maturities — which monitor fiscal capacity. But it would be supplemented by assessing balance sheet measures and better scoring of the growth impact from government reforms and investment, which often take more than five years to bear fruit. Creditors want to know whether borrowing will create future tax revenue streams, not just assets.
The OBR could then allow the debt ratio to be rising over five years if it reckoned that measures today could lower its trajectory over an extended horizon. The promise to balance the current, day-to-day budget (which includes interest costs) will continue to act as a check; lowering its timeframe from five years could convey more seriousness.
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But groundwork is required first. OBR resources need beefing up, markets need time to digest changes and, crucially, the government must get better at appraising investment projects. These are also reasons why rushing to new target measures may not be the best course of action. Caught between promises on tax, the desire to show discipline, and the need to make space for investment, the chancellor may then resort to tweaking the debt definition at this Budget. This is not ideal. But if Reeves can also start shifting the country away from its outmoded focus on arbitrary targets and towards a more flexible fiscal framework, Britain’s economic future will look a lot more promising.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a general partner of Air Street Capital and co-author of the State of AI report
Frontier artificial intelligence labs are unusual beasts. Unlike other businesses, a number of their founders believe their life’s work has the potential to end the world. Yet the vast sums needed to develop capable models forces them to demonstrate immediate commercial success.
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OpenAI’s unconventional structure was a creative way of reconciling these tensions — on paper at least.
By combining a not-for-profit oversight board with a for-profit commercial entity that limited returns, it hoped to allow researchers concerned about existential risk to live under the same roof as their revenue-minded peers, safe in the knowledge that excessive financial returns could not override their mission to do good.
Now, OpenAI is widely expected to dispense with its non-profit status. Investors who took part in its latest $6.6bn funding round can recover their money if the conversion does not take place.
This is unsurprising. Any founder or investor will tell you that no amount of corporate structural Jenga can glue together a team that is not aligned.
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Last year, tensions between OpenAI’s non-profit board and Sam Altman, its co-founder and chief executive, led to Altman’s dramatic firing. He was rapidly rehired and the board has since been replaced. Several senior executives have left the company, including co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.
Altman is now free to arrange the company as he pleases. Without a profit cap, it should be even easier for OpenAI to raise the funds it needs.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit research organisation and created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019. At the Paris Peace Forum last November, Microsoft president Brad Smith even spoke admiringly of it — comparing it to Meta, where founder Mark Zuckerberg maintains control by holding shares with extra voting rights.
“Meta is owned by shareholders. OpenAI is owned by a non-profit,” said Smith. “Which would you have more confidence in? Getting your technology from a non-profit? Or a for-profit company that is entirely controlled by one human being?”
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While it might seem surprising that investors like Microsoft were willing to accept this unusual structure, it was less of a sacrifice than it appears at first sight. First, OpenAI is not yet profitable so returns remain theoretical. Second, Microsoft was set to receive 75 per cent of OpenAI’s eventual profits until it recouped its initial investment and the subsequent profit cap did not kick in until a healthy return. Microsoft’s decision to back Altman also suggests that it believed one human being has substantial sway over that company too.
Still, any structural oddity can put off investors and OpenAI’s funding needs are vast. If it now adopts the public benefit corporation model employed by AI peers such as Anthropic and xAI, investors need not be concerned that lofty goals will get in the way of profits. While this requires companies to pursue social goals, there are no exacting standards needed to demonstrate compliance.
As generative AI products begin to drive billions of dollars a year in revenue, more teams are being forced to move away from philosophical debates and decide if they’re serious about commercialisation or not.
But there is no inherent conflict between running a straightforward for-profit company and building safe, robust technology. Reckless behaviour that regulates an industry out of existence endangers profits.
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Companies like Google DeepMind and Anthropic have more conventional structures than OpenAI and have built substantial AI safety teams. In this industry, complicated corporate engineering achieves very little.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
PwC’s new UK chief has launched an overhaul of its operations in the country, which will involve creating a standalone technology and artificial intelligence unit, in a move that bosses acknowledged could be “unsettling” for staff.
The Big Four accounting firm told employees last week that it would embark on a reorganisation of areas of the business affecting about 2,700 staff and partners, adding that it was part of its “new vision to become the pre-eminent firm”, according to a document seen by the Financial Times.
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Under the plan, PwC will create a “digital delivery unit” focused on tech innovation, AI engineering, cloud and data. The firm will also overhaul parts of its consulting, deals, risk and tax practices by moving and merging certain functions, creating six new teams.
It is the biggest internal overhaul of PwC’s UK business in years. It also marks the latest reorganisation of a Big Four accounting firm as the sector seeks to adapt to changing client demand and grapple with how best to structure their fledgling AI advisory businesses, which partners see as a lucrative growth area.
The realignment will create upheaval for about a tenth of PwC’s UK workforce who will be transferred into new teams and service lines. Reorganisations within professional services firms can often lead to jostling for position within the business.
Laura Hinton, PwC’s UK managing partner who was a runner-up to Marco Amitrano in the race to lead the firm earlier this year, was dispatched to break the news to staff last week in a pre-recorded video message.
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In the message, a transcript of which has been seen by the FT, Hinton said that the reorganisation was designed to “simplify” the business and “reduce duplication”. She added that it would “create scale and increase our market impact”.
“I know that, for some, change can feel energising, while for others it can feel unsettling,” Hinton said. “As we continue to adapt to our clients’ needs, it’s important that we all get used to being more agile, while continuing to support each other.”
Details of Amitrano’s broader strategy for the firm will be shared with its 1,000-plus partners at briefings on Wednesday, according to several people familiar with the matter.
It comes after a bruising period for the industry, with PwC last month reporting a drop in average partner pay as revenue growth slowed and higher costs and provisions for legal claims hit profits.
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Rival Deloitte, which embarked on an overhaul of its global operations earlier this year to cut costs and reduce the group’s complexity, also posted a drop in average partner pay and weaker growth.
PwC’s reorganisation is not designed to cut costs and will not lead to new redundancies, according to a person briefed on the plan. The firm last year axed hundreds of jobs amid a market downturn and also launched a round of “silent lay-offs” in the UK earlier this year.
Hinton said the new digital delivery unit would house 900 “technologists” and work across the firm’s different service lines. It will also be given a “market-facing name”.
“These plans are a work in progress so, although we don’t have all of the detail or answers, we still wanted to share this now to be open and transparent,” she said.
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Separately, the firm’s consulting leaders shut down speculation that PwC had plans to sell Strategy&, the firm’s strategy consulting arm, to Bain & Co, or any other buyer, telling staff that the industry rumours were not correct, according to an email seen by the FT.
In a statement to the FT, Amitrano said the changes “reflect our strategic focus on clients, technology and PwC’s global network. They will make it easier for us to collaborate and mobilise teams to better deliver for clients”. The changes will come into effect from January next year.
“As baleias estão perto”; word goes around from the sailors to the guides. The whales are close today. The humpbacks swim around Príncipe’s nursery shores from mid-summer until October, keeping their calves away from the deeper, darker waters where the sharks cruise. We don’t see them as we zoom around the island in a dinky black fishing boat, but it’s enough to feel they’re in there. They’ve been known to breach just outside the island’s port, throwing their massive bodies into the air and crashing back down. It’s understood they use this to communicate: excitement, danger, dominance.
Wildlife occupies the supreme position here on Príncipe, an island in the nation-state archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea. It is situated one degree north of the equator, so the year-round heat and frequent thunderstorms have nurtured a rich, thick jungle that spreads out of the forest line and onto the beach. Coconuts plummet unexpectedly from above and fallen palm trunks split up the beaches. From September to April, wet season, the rains beat down intermittently but forcefully. Nature is a benign ruler here, though. The island, just 20km long, and 200km from the mainland of Africa, was formed 31 million years ago by volcanic eruptions. Far from the reaches of predators, the plants and animals haven’t had to develop venom to protect themselves. They just jostle for space.
Mark Shuttleworth, the South Africa-born, Isle of Man-based software mogul behind Canonical, touched down here in 2009 when he was looking for a place “to decompress”, and was instantly captivated by the island’s natural charms. “It’s just this extraordinary atmosphere,” he says. “It’s kind of primeval.” It’s also one of the least-visited countries in the world. He wondered what would become of it: “I thought I could either bottle that memory and never go back, never find out what happened to it, just pretend it was as it was when I first arrived there. Or I could try to create a sense of a future that would be interesting, that would preserve some of the things that I think people viscerally react to when they get there.”
He began talking to the local government, and learnt about a potential deal with Agripalma, a palm oil company, that would see 1,000 hectares of land cleared on the north of the island. He offered an alternative: a hybrid luxury tourism and organic agriculture business. In 2010 he founded HBD Príncipe (“Here Be Dragons”).
Fourteen years (and more than $100mn) later, he now has four hotels, a farm that furnishes produce, cocoa and coffee for them, and a community initiative providing school supplies and funds to help people get to university, subsidised by a €25 per guest per night contribution. Bom Bom, a collection of bungalows originally built in the 1980s as an old fishing hotel, is nestled in the jungle on a strip of land laced on either side by white sandy beaches. Sundy Praia is made up of 15 implausibly luxurious tented villas in the jungle along another strip of beach; Roça Sundy is the white-pillared plantation hotel with a difficult past. The fourth hotel, Omali, is on (much larger) São Tomé, where the six-hour connecting flight from Lisbon lands.
This year sees Shuttleworth reopen Bom Bom, his first hotel and first love on the island. From the clean white comfort of the bungalows – some directly above the sand, others higher up the hillside – you can lounge on the two beaches, one facing the sunset, the other, more sheltered, for swimming. Local guides take you down the coastline by boat, stopping at Praia Boi or Praia Banana, or to hike through the jungle to the Oquê Pipi waterfall or Ribeira Izé, a ruin of a plantation in the dark centre of the forest, now subsumed by palms, oca and almond trees.
The completion of Bom Bom marks the beginning, in earnest, of the operation Shuttleworth is running here on Príncipe. His stated ambition is to leave a positive legacy on the island. “I’ve chosen not to have children,” he told the FT in 2019. “I’m interested in figuring out what impact I can have on the world, and I’ve chosen that this should be one of the places where I try to pull off the impossible.” Now the biggest employer on an island that a decade ago suffered from a nearly 80 per cent unemployment rate, he’s undoubtedly made a huge impact here. But the island is only relatively newly free from the Portuguese empire, which ruled until 1975 and continued the practice of indenturing workers on cacao and coffee plantations long into the 20th century. Its legacy is still felt and visible on the island. The ongoing challenge for Shuttleworth will be to show both visitors and locals that an outsider can come in and succeed in leaving a truly positive mark.
As far as the success of Bom Bom goes, the island and surrounding ocean have done a lot of the work for him. As you approach on the 35-minute connecting flight from São Tomé, Príncipe appears like a bouquet of greenery, with yellow beaches flowering along its shores. The air smells of wood smoke and, beneath it, a lower note of drenched vegetation. Wind plays in the palm trees. Storm clouds roll around. At about 5.30pm, standing on the wooden decking of a bungalow just above the sand at Bom Bom, you can watch the day turn from light to soft pink to sherbet orange to black in about 30 minutes.
Riding west from Bom Bom on the boat, we trace the shape of the island, its mass of jungle occasionally punctuated by a fishing village, until we reach the Bay of Needles, a collection of towers of phonolite lava. One is table-flat; another is so tall its top is veiled in mist; still another pushes out of the earth like a long-nailed finger pointing up. We anchor next to a tiny beach to swim off the boat; warm air and cool sea. It begins to rain softly. I think of the big bodies of the whales swimming around, weightless, in the same water. Back on the boat there are slices of pineapple, which grows all year round here, along with guava, watermelon and coconut cake.
Over the next two days, after breakfasts overlooking the sea, I explore the land with HBD guide David Carmo. In the capital of Santo António, he drives me past painted wooden houses, the police station (“No one is in jail right now,” he reassures me), the government building and the market. He takes me to Tia Zinha’s, his favourite of the nine or so restaurants in town. Zinha cooks all of the food over a fire built from wood she collects herself; she serves mustard-yellow moqueca soup with red fish and herbs, rice and grilled fish with skin charred by the fire. A cold, malty Rosema, São Tomé and Príncipe’s national beer, comes in a brown glass bottle that has no need for a label (“because there is only one”, says Carmo).
He stops the car every so often to show me things: a cinnamon tree with leaves that taste exactly like the powdered spice; bushes of black pepper, chilli, coffee, ginger, lemongrass, basil, and the island’s seven types of bananas. Little macaque monkeys leap and chatter in the trees. If you take a deep enough breath in the forest, Carmo says, you can tell if there are monkeys around because “you can smell them”.
Carmo describes animal behaviours as if they are decisions each species has made. Fly fish “don’t like to put their eggs in the sea, they like to put them in the roots of the mangrove”, he says, so “the eggs can stay safe”. The “mother whales” usually move closer to the island’s shores to keep their calves safe in mid-July, but “if she is pregnant earlier she will come earlier”. And he knows where to beat the wildlife at its own game: the fishermen use crushed acacia flowers to dye their nets blue-black so that when they’re in the sea, “the fish don’t know they’re there”.
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With its two beaches and wide, unbroken views over the ocean, Bom Bom is the ideal base for swimming, snorkelling, boating and lounging. Shuttleworth’s other hotels each offer their own, different vibe. Sundy Praia, designed by famed French architect Didier Lefort, gives seclusion, privacy and a higher degree of luxury. The tented villas are set deeper into the forest, and all have four-poster beds and huge carved stone baths looking straight out into the mass of greenery. Some have private pools; there’s a larger infinity pool positioned over the beach. The restaurant does fine dining: salads studded with citrus and chubby prawns, pink-roasted duck with orange sauce and Thai basil and melting chocolate souffle with coconut ice cream.
Roça Sundy, the old plantation, advertises itself as the “historic” hotel. It’s a dark history, though. São Tomé and Príncipe were reportedly uninhabited islands until the Portuguese colonised them in 1470. They brought tens of thousands of enslaved people from mainland Africa, along with Portuguese convicts and 2,000 Sephardic Jewish children, and put them into forced labour producing sugar, then cocoa and coffee. Slavery made the archipelago the world’s biggest producer of sugar at one point, and in 1908 it was the largest cocoa producer. Though slavery itself was abolished in 1875, the practice of forced labour, through the use of “contracts”, continued for decades. In 1953, triggered by a protest held by São Toméans, the Portuguese murdered and tortured hundreds of people, and sent others to forced labour camps. The country only won its independence in 1975. Earlier this year the government began drafting plans to ask Portugal for reparations.
At Roça Sundy, a crenellated wall runs around the perimeter of the central lawn, punctuated by watch towers with slit windows. Facing the house are the rows and rows of buildings, their windows gaping black holes, where the enslaved people lived. But there is no acknowledgement of the forced labour that happened here. The only history memorialised is a neat plaque marking the point where a telescope helped prove the theory of relativity.
When I ask Shuttleworth how the history of the island has factored into his thinking about running his tourism operation here, given it has an extremely sad past, he queries this view: “Does it?” he replies. “Every history, every family has its darkness, right?”
There is a dark and unspoken logic to the way history is treated in any plantation hotel, and this kind of tourism has undergone a reckoning in recent years. The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, writing in his Ethicist column in The New York Times, advised a reader who was wondering whether it was OK to attend a plantation wedding that to do so is to idealise “lifestyles built directly on the unpaid labour of Black people who were treated as property and regularly abused”. It seems to me that running a former plantation as a hotel is no different.
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There is no doubt that the arrival of a significant new employer on the island is having a positive economic impact. My guides tell me the company gives “a lot of opportunities”, and you can feel things moving with an energy. As Shuttleworth says, the new influx of visitors can’t help but react to the primordial mountains, overabundance of luscious fruits, the music and the dazzling wildlife. But in order to celebrate these things, there is work to be done in understanding and repairing the past.
Out in the waters close to the shore, the humpback calves lollop along, growing stronger every day; the mothers feed in the rich waters, occasionally surfacing. The locals and fishermen follow their movements each year, only for the wonder of seeing them. Just a handful of lucky visitors every year will have the privilege.
Baya Simons travelled as a guest of Rainbow Tours, which offers seven nights in São Tomé and Príncipe, including two nights at Omali Lodge and five nights at Bom Bom, from £2,995pp, based on two sharing, and international and internal flights. hbdprincipe.com, rainbowtours.co.uk
IT’S very important to know your rights if you are embroiled in a fence row with a neighbour.
How do I know which side I own?
A boundary feature can be a fence, wall, hedge, ditch, piece of wire, or sometimes even just the edge of a driveway.
The only way to know for certain who owns what side and to avoid any neighbour disputes, is to refer to the title plan or Land Registry.
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In this, the T mark is used to indicate who the boundary belongs to and therefore who is responsible for its upkeep, say pros at Jacksons Fencing.
Larger developments tend to have some indication provided by the builder, but there are no hard and fast rules
People often think they are responsible for the left (or right) hand boundary wherever they live, but there isn’t any legal basis for this.
You can check with HM Land Registry to see which boundary feature you are responsible for.
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Often households can’t get hold of the paperwork but experts say they shouldn’t panic.
Homeowners can guess who owns the fence by checking where the rails are.
Pros say: “The fence is typically facing away from their property so that their neighbour gets the ‘good’ side.
“This is the most secure way of facing fencing so there are no rails for anyone to use to climb into your garden.
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“This is then repeated with the neighbour on the other side to ensure that each home has both a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fence side.”
Walls and fences are often built on the land of the boundary’s owner with the edge of the wall marking the limit.
While professionals agree a glimpse at the fence can give you a hint, it’s not foolproof – so you can’t be certain.
Fines and punishment
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It is recommended to always check legal documents before making changes to avoid hefty fines.
There is no law that the neighbour has to get the good side of the fence, so it’s completely up to whoever owns the fence.
Fencing pros have suggested: “It may be worth selecting a double-sided panel with no ‘bad’ side as both sides look the same and rails are concealed within the fence panel.”
If one boundary backs onto a road or footpath you can install the panels with the rails on the inside
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But if it’s installed on the outside, it can provide an “easy ladder for burglars to enter your garden”.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Property Litigation Association have created a mediation service to help neighbours resolve disputes over their property boundaries without resorting to court action.
RICS also provides a list of surveyors who could assist in boundary disputes.
If a dispute continues, it is ultimately a court that makes decisions, but they do not like such disputes being put before them.
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Changing a boundary
If you want to change an existing boundary, such as replacing an old fence with a new one, we always recommend discussing with your neighbour first and making sure it is all agreed.
The registered titles can help you to reach an agreement, but only if this information has been added.
In terms of decorations on a fence legal advisers recommended asking around over who actually first installed it.
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But they also urged caution before getting to work on amending the fence without getting more certainty yourself – since there is a danger of actually being prosecuted for criminal damage.
How high can a garden fence be?
The height of the fence is measured from your ground level, this can have an impact when, due to slopes in the ground, your garden may be at a higher level than your neighbours‘.
A garden fence can be as high as 100m but you need to get planning permission if it’s over than 2m.
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However, there are some complications to this.
If you are thinking about front garden fences, restrictions state that fences alongside a driveway can be a maximum of 1m or 3ft.
You would need to get planning permission for putting a trellis on a fence of 2m.
But, if any plant that you grow on that trellis exceeds 2m, you do not need to obtain a permit for the growing plant.
THE charming seaside town of Grange-over-Sands has been attracting holidaymakers for 175 years.
Located on the north side of Morecambe Bay in Cumbria, Grange-over-Sands benefits from its own microclimate, making it slightly warmer than other nearby tourist destinations.
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Grange-over-Sands had its heyday in the 19th centuryCredit: Alamy
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The Ornamental Gardens is one of the town’s top attractionsCredit: Alamy
Grange-over-Sands has this microclimate to thank for its moniker as the “Lakeland Riviera”.
The seaside town was a fashionable seaside resort town in the 19th century thanks to its pleasant temperatures and the arrival of the railroad in the 1850s.
Steeped in charm with promenade walks, lush gardens and sweeping views over Morecambe Bay, Grange-over-Sands is an ideal autumn break for Brits.
One of the main attractions in the town is its Ornamental Gardens, which has been affectionately nicknamed the “Duck Pond” by locals.
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Constructed on an area of marshland that was cut off from the shore when the railway was built in the 1800s, the pond is fed by a stream that gives the pond a constant flow of water, meaning it never runs dry.
The pond also has a fountain and several paths and benches surround the pond.
Another popular attraction in the English town is the Promenade Walk – a level walkway along the edge of Morecambe Bay.
A playground is located on the southern end of the promenade equipped with swings, a slide and a climbing frame.
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Despite being set on the coast, Grange-over-Sands doesn’t technically have a beach.
However, it is home to a saltmarsh that’s part of nearby Morecambe Bay.
Discovering UK’s Most Picturesque Towns
Why does Grange-over-Sands have a microclimate?
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THE microclimate in Grange-over-Sands is milder and sunnier than the rest of the Lake District.
Grange-over-Sands has a microclimate because of its location on the edge of the Lake District and the coast.
Factors such as the Gulf Stream, the nearby mountains and its south-facing position also contribute to its slightly warmer temperatures.
There are plenty of other things to do just outside Grange-over-Sands like a visit to Holker Hall and Garden – an award-winning stately home with beautiful gardens, woodland walks and a deer park.
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Cartmel Village is known for its famous sticky toffee pudding and it’s also a short drive away from Grange-over-Sands.
Other neighbouring attractions include The Lakeland Motor Museum, Yewbarrow House Garden and Sizergh Castle and Garden.
For visitors who want to stay overnight there’s The Commodore Inn – a pub and restaurant with six en-suite rooms.
There are several restaurants in Grange-over-Sands like Thyme Out Coffee House & Restaurant, The Estuary Bistro and the Akhi indian restaurant.
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Grange-over-Sands is a 35-minute drive from Morecambe, and it’s a 26-minute drive from Kendal.
Direct trains operate from Grange-over-Sands to Manchester Airport and Lancaster.
While you’re there….
If you’re paying a visit to Grange-Over-Sands, it’s also worth checking out the charming town of Ambleside, which features England‘s best restaurant – The Old Stamp House.
At the AA‘s 2023 Hospitality Awards, the Lake District dining room was named England’s Restaurant of the Year and got a 3 Rosette Award for Culinary Excellence.
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Ambleside’s dining options may be fancy, but its outdoors are rugged and adventurous.
Included in that are the two waterfalls, Stock Ghyll Force and Rydal Falls.
The former is just a short walk from the town centre, where it drops 70ft into a plunge pool before continuing on its journey downstream into Lake Windermere.
The lake is the largest in England and is surrounded by mountain peaks and villages, with Ambleside sitting to the north.
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For those who aren’t so keen on getting wet, the likes of Wray Castle offer dry options.
The National Trust-owned gothic revival castle sits on the shores of Lake Windermere and has turrets, towers, informal grounds and miles of lakeshore paths.
The Trust say it offers church-like interiors and panoramic Lake District views.
It also played an important part in UK literary history, as it’s where Beatrix Potter holidayed in the Lakes for the first time as a child.
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Three little-known attractions to visit in the Lake District
HERE are three little-known places to visit in the Lake District.
Rydal Cave Located near Rydal Water, this man-made cavern was originally a quarry. However, it’s now a serene and somewhat mystical place to explore. The cave is large enough to walk into and features a small pond inside, adding to its enchanting atmosphere.
St. Catherine’s Church, Boot Nestled in the picturesque Eskdale Valley, St. Catherine’s Church is a charming, isolated, church with a peaceful riverside setting.
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Muncaster Castle Gardens and Hawk & Owl Centre While Muncaster Castle itself is relatively well-known, the extensive gardens and the Hawk & Owl Centre often don’t get the attention they deserve. The gardens cover 77 acres and feature a range of beautiful plants, including rhododendrons and azaleas. The Hawk & Owl Centre offers daily flying displays and the opportunity to learn about various birds of prey in a stunning setting.
A UK city has recently been praised for having the friendliest people in the country.
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