Craig Long Gallery

You'll find Craig Long Gallery tucked away in Windermere, a proper working artist's space rather than a grand institution. The gallery showcases contemporary work - mainly paintings and mixed media - with the kind of focus you don't get in bigger establishments. It's intimate, sometimes refreshingly quiet, and the sort of place where you might actually have a conversation with someone who knows the work inside out.

This is fundamentally for art lovers rather than casual droppers-in. If you're the type to spend twenty minutes looking at a single piece, you'll get something from it. Kids will tolerate it for maybe half an hour unless they're genuinely interested in art. The gallery works best as a morning stop before heading out for a walk or lunch rather than a destination in itself.

Windermere's position makes it easy to slot into a Lake District park holiday - Fallbarrow and White Cross Bay are barely a mile away, or there's Lakeside Retreat Glamping if you want something with better reviews. The gallery's free entry (assuming it still is - worth ringing ahead), so it costs nothing to pop in and see what's on.

Visit when the weather's poor and you want an indoor half-hour, or if you're genuinely interested in contemporary art. Windermere itself has enough cafes and shops that you can easily build a morning around it. Don't expect cutting-edge drama, but it's honest work displayed without pretension.