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The limestone-grey town of KENDAL might be billed as the "Gateway to the Lakes", but it's nearly ten miles from Windermere - the true start of the lakes - and has more in common with the market towns to the east. Nonetheless, it offers rewarding rambles around the "yards" and "ginnels" which make an engaging maze on both sides of Highgate and Stricklandgate, the main streets. The old Market Place has long since succumbed to development, with the market hall now converted to the Westmorland Shopping Centre, but traditional stalls still do business outside every Wednesday and Saturday. The town's most visible product is Kendal Mintcake , an energy-giving confection of sugar and peppermint oil that has been hoisted to the top of the world's highest mountains. The town's museums and art gallery have a joint admission policy (each open daily: April-Oct 10.30am-5pm; Nov-March 10.30am-4pm; GBP3, GBP1 with a ticket for one of the other museums). The Kendal Museum , on Station Road ( ), holds the district's natural history and archeological finds, bolstered by reverential displays on the life of Alfred Wainwright . In 1952 this one-time borough treasurer, dissatisfied with the accuracy of existing maps of the paths and ancient tracks across the fells, embarked on what became a series of 47 walking guides, all but two of them painstakingly handwritten with mapped routes and delicately drawn views. The other two museums are in the Georgian Abbot Hall ( ) and its stable block, by the river to the south. The main hall, painstakingly restored to its 1760s town-house origins, houses the Art Gallery , where cherubic portraits by society painter George Romney line the walls, along with works by Constable, Ruskin, Turner, Edward Lear and lesser local artists. The stables now contain the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry , where reconstructed house interiors stand alongside workshops which make a fairly vivid presentation of rural trades and crafts, from spinning and weaving to tanning. Just behind Abbot Hall, the wide aisles of the Early English parish church (daily: Easter-Oct 9.20am-4.30pm; Nov-Easter 9.20am-noon) house a number of family chapels, including that of the Parr family, who once owned Kendal Castle , on a hillock to the east across the river. If you fancy the climb up for the views, follow the footpath from the end of Parr Street, across the footbridge just north of the church and hall.
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