Photo: Richerman (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A self-guided audio tour in Beatrix Potter's and William Wordsworth's country. In Hawkshead, the village Furness Abbey ran as a wool market, it visits the abbey's fifteenth-century gatehouse, the house tradition gives to Ann Tyson, Wordsworth's landlady, William Heelis's office, which was the Beatrix Potter Gallery from 1988 to 2022, the Market House of 1790, St Michael and All Angels on its hillock, and the grammar school of 1585 with the desk marked W Wordsworth. Then the Quaker meeting house of 1688 at Colthouse, and about three kilometres along Esthwaite Water to Near Sawrey: Lakefield, where the Potters spent the summer of 1896, the Tower Bank Arms and Buckle Yeat from her books, Hill Top, bought in 1905, and the tarn on Claife Heights where she and Heelis kept a rowing boat.
13 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 34 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 2 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Hawkshead Courthouse, Ann Tyson's Cottage, William Heelis's office, the old Beatrix Potter Gallery, The Square and the Market House, St Michael and All Angels, Hawkshead, Hawkshead Grammar School, Colthouse Friends' Meeting House.
Esthwaite Water.
Ees Wyke, the Potters' Lakefield, Tower Bank Arms, Buckle Yeat, Hill Top, Moss Eccles Tarn.
The fifteenth-century gatehouse of Furness Abbey's manorial farm, probably with its court room over the arch.
The school founded in 1585, where Wordsworth was a pupil from 1779 to 1787; a desk marked W Wordsworth is under glass downstairs.
The small glacial lake Wordsworth walked round as a schoolboy, generally taken as the setting of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher.
The farm Beatrix Potter bought in 1905 with royalties from Peter Rabbit, and the setting of Tom Kitten and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
The seventeenth-century inn beside Hill Top that appears in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Part of the tarn Potter bought in 1926; she planted its water lilies, and William Heelis fished there while she painted.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 13 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Beatrix Potter's Hawkshead and Near Sawrey — Hill Top, the Gallery and the Grammar School, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including St Michael and All Angels, Hawkshead, Hawkshead Grammar School, Esthwaite Water, Hawkshead Courthouse and Ann Tyson's Cottage. That is about 18 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~4 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 13 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.