Going off alanborky’s atmospheric story however, you might not get a warm reception if you asked locally!

I loved getting up just as the sun was coming up and standing on the lake’s bank, looking out across this solid-looking ’slab’ of perfectly smooth, undisturbed quicksilver for about half an hour or so before starting serving the guests’ breakfasts, and even though I never actually saw anything break the surface of the lake at those times, I could never shake the feeling of something mysterious going on in its unseen depths.

At night, though, it was a different story, and once the sky and the lake turned black and the stars came out, the lake seemed to burst into life.

Again, I never actually saw anything definitely suggestive of a monster, but I heard things out there - large things - and saw peculiar wave formations which clearly contravened the direction of both the wind and the gently lapping ‘tide’ the lake always seemed to have.

During the daylight hours, in the hope of explaining away my nighttime observations, I’d often circumnavigate the lake in search of the sort of land-based life-forms my university training had led me to expect to find living off the lake, but found none.

There were birds, of course, particularly swans, but I noticed how, even during the daytime, there were certain parts of the lake even the swans permanently steered clear off.

The other thing I noticed was how densely frequented the lake and its edge was during the daytime, but how quickly everybody deserted it as the light started going down.

When I asked guests and members of staff at the Low Wood (and the other local hotels) why they seemed to avoid the lake as it got dark, most couldn’t given an explanation, and were even slightly startled they hadn’t even noticed themselves doing this until it had been pointed out to them.

Some members of staff, though, privately confessed to a feeling of dread if they happened to find themselves out on their own while even remotely near the lake, even during the day.

The commonly used expression by way of explanation was the lake felt somehow ‘haunted’.

Whenever I tried to broach the subject with the locals, I was astonished how defensive and even aggressive they could become.

A highly eccentric friend of my brother, working at the Low Wood as a porter with him, attempted to evade imminent Police capture by wrapping his head in a bath towel - his hope being the cops wouldn’t notice him! - until, on realising he’d been spotted, he took a running dive into the lake, his purpose being, he later explained, to make a swim for it!

For some reason it’d skipped his mind he couldn’t actually swim, and of course he was captured; but he later freely confessed to me that even if he had have been an Olympic class swimmer, he would have never attempted a manoeuvre like that at night because of the ‘thing’ he was convinced that would’ve been lying in wait for him.

More local sightings of unusual activity in the Lake reported

Lake Windermere, Cumbria – 7 March 2007 — Following a series of chance photographs of an unexplained creature in Lake Windermere by Cumbria-based photographer Linden Adams, scientists are still unable to offer any logical explanation.

The pictures were taken on 5th February by Linden Adams while on a professional photographic assignment on the edge of Lake Windermere. Adams explains: “We saw something surface in the middle of the lake which then began to swim at considerable speed in an easterly direction. At first we thought it was a large fish or bird, even a diver, but it was too large to be any of the wildfowl or fish normally seen on the lake. My wife and I estimate the object to be at least 15 metres long and dark in colour.”

The photographs taken by Adams were sent to Mark Carr, a photographer registered with the Council for Registration for Forensic Practitioners (CREP) in the field of Imaging. Carr was able to verify that the photographs were not tampered with in any way. Carr comments: “I have thoroughly examined these photographs, from the RAW files, and I am satisfied that they have not been digitally modified. Neither are the pictures the result of a camera or lens error. I examined the entire card so I could put all the images into context, and I also checked all the file data contained in the EXIF file attached by the camera software when the image is recorded, which give exact details of the camera settings and times.

From my examination of the disk, files and camera, I confirm that the position of the ‘anomaly’ was around 2.8 to 3km away from the camera and the visible area of the anomaly is approximately 4 metres in length. However from detailed examinations, pixel by pixel, and by looking at the patterns and characteristics of wake, I believe the total length of this anomaly to be in the region of 15m.”

The authenticity of the images has been further verified by Tim Atherton, Managing Director and Technical Director of FixerLabs Ltd., a company that specialises in image enhancement software. “I confirm that the image I saw of the object in the water appeared to be genuine. The image had mild softness due to the lens and a small amount of motion blur due to camera shake. I saw no evidence that the image had been modified in any way and everything was consistent with your description of the way the images were taken.”

Dr Ian Winfield from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology at the Lancaster Environment centre commented: “On the basis of my 27 years experience as a professional freshwater fish ecologist, including leading research programmes on Windermere for the last 17 years, this size estimate means I cannot explain the photographs by reference to any fish or other vertebrate species previously demonstrated to inhabit Windermere.”

The Wasdale Head Inn also has great food and beer!

I’m speculating this creature is gilled and doesn’t require mammalian lungs. Huge eel? Very interesting.