A long drive for a short hike. I’d seen the infinity pool a couple of times online so made a note of the location and planned a route on the OS Maps website.
There are a couple of car parks by this part of Thirlmere but I chose this long section of layby on the A591 near Thirlspot Farm.
The route starts at the side of the road, following a footpath south for a quick trip over the road to see Thirlmere Reservoir. Then through Swirls Carpark and north, steadily uphill to the plunge pool. After a plunge the route follows the waterfalls down to the main path where you loop back to where you’d been earlier with a different way back to the layby via Thirlspot Farm.
A nice view for Tiggy as I left her in a layby.
Follow the path along the side of the road heading south, this pic is looking back at the layby where Tiggy is parked.
Not far down the path are a couple of car parks for Thirlmere Reservoir, here I crossed the road and headed down a short footpath for a slight detour to checkout Thirlmere close up.
Then head back to the road and cross back over to the other side and through Swirls Car Park. After heading along a path following a stream there are a couple of streams and footbridges to cross as you turn left and head north on the footpath to the waterfalls.
The stone path is easy to follow with small waterfalls and great views across the valley.
At this signpost follow the footpath to Stanah Sticks Pass, later on we’ll be heading back to Tiggy from this signpost following the Thirlspot Farm path.
As you get higher, some more views across the valley.
Then after a short uphill trek you get to the inifity pool here. There is a bit of a steep but short scramble down to it, but it is a well worn path as you can see on the left of this pic.
As you can see from the above pic, it was a little busy and as there was a queue. So I decided to follow the stream just a little bit upstream to find a smaller, antisocial plunge pool.
After a relaxing plunge I headed down the path parallel to the waterfalls and Fisherplace Gill. Here you can see the path to the right of the Gill and the various waterfalls.
This is a view of the infinity pool itself (top of pic, where two climbers are stood) and the waterfall below it. As I found, there are other pools along the Gill.
Head down alongside the Gill following a short but steep path until you get to a footbridge, don’t cross the footbridge, turn left. The path then heads south and back to the signpost we saw earlier, at this junction. The path to the left was where we originally came from, we’re taking the right hand path by the drystone wall.
This time heading down the hill to Thirlspot Farm.
One final look back at where I’d been, the path from the infinity pool followed the horizontal drystone wall in this pic.
Thirlspot Farm sits right by the main road we parked on earlier, turn left at the farm and follow the footpath along the side of the road back to the layby and Tiggy.
All the Lake District hikes: