The Boatman's Cafe and Gift Shop

windermere pulls a lot of visitors through fast, people ticking off the lake and moving on. the boatman's cafe and gift shop, sitting just off rectory road near the coach park in bowness-on-windermere, is where you might actually stop. it's an independent spot, which in a town this tourist-heavy means something, because the pressure to go generic is real and plenty of places give in to it. what you get here is a cafe that's held its own against that. the gift shop element makes it a slightly different proposition than a straight coffee bar, somewhere to linger past the cup. if you're arriving at the coach park and need a reason to slow down before you hit the lake, this is the right turn to make.