The Flying Fleece in South Lakeland

Great place. Josie was an amazing waitress; attentive, friendly and knowledgeable. The rotisserie chicken was tasty and the portions were generous. 5 🌟

Beware! Bought a pint & a half of beer clearly marked at £4.95 a pint & was charged £8. When I questioned this there is an automatic 5% service charge applied! I questioned why this wasn’t applied when we visited 2 days earlier. Only the supervisor was able to reverse this & refund me. This is totally unacceptable & nothing but a rip off. Happy to pay for good service but not be charged extra before you’ve sipped your drink but above all it’s the fact you’re not told, imagine if a supermarket applied this stealth tactic. I wonder how many others have been scammed here the same way! There are plenty of honest establishments in Ambleside which I would recommend using instead, we won’ return here.

Decent food for a good price. Very large restaurant with tables on three floors, but almost always quite full. Good and fast service. Basically the higher end of pub food.

Love the food, but I object to 5% service being charged automatically and although it is my favourite place to eat in Ambleside, effectively being told what to tip, does put me off returning.

My wife and I just had a lovely meal here. I had the gammon steak and my wife had the burger, which she couldn't finish as it was to much for her (I did though 😋) Such a lovely place. The service was great, made to feel very welcome. Stacey was very polite, attentive and lovely to chat to. (Give her a pay rise....😁) If we are in Ambleside again then we'll definitely head back to The Flying Fleece.

Lovely evening made special by Josie and Alex

Great pub with food if you're lucky to sit by the log burner. Good range of food and drinks coupled with good service from Alexi on the terrace if it is sunny😊 4 local ales

Myself and my wife had the pleasure of having dinner at the flying fleece tonight, this was our first visit on our 7 day visit to the lake district. We was greeted by the smiling face of Josie who allowed us to chose which table we fancied. Drinks were ordered which Josie was kind enough to help me decide on my ale choice with a little local knowledge and we ordered steak which as it was steak night which is a new thing to have a themed special for different days of the week for this pub as I was informed by the lovely Josie. The service was quick on getting the food to us both. In all my days I can't recall having a rump steak as good as what I had today, juicy, full of flavour and no chewy bits, we ate the whole thing. Myself and wife couldn't eat the chips as we was so full on everything else as the steak was big in my opinion. To the Flying Fleece please don't change anything and look after your supplier. To Josie please keep smiling. best wishes J and V

Fabulous weekend of music and beer 🍺

Good pint, good service. Didn't have anything to eat.

Good pub grub. Had a meal last week and took advantage of the early dining offer. All of us enjoyed the meal

Very disappointing. Came here last year and it was excellent, this time I paid £30 to reserve a table, only to be told (after arriving 20 minutes early) the kitchen was now closed. Obviously chose an early finish. The lad behind the bar did try his best to sort it but to no avail, no reflection on him but if you're going to charge to reserve at least hold up your end of the deal. Won't be returning which is a shame.

Great vibe. Great service. Staff friendly and helpful. Will be visiting again.

I would recommend coming here. Had two lovely hot chocolates. Two lovely Sunday roasts, one vegetarian and one trio of meats (Lamb, beef, pork). I would liked it if the roasts were hotter, but that's the only complaint.

Fantastic food. Fish and chips... As good as you will get ! Pies, amazing, we got the chicken, delicious. Good selection of beers and drinks too Soo good.

Sadly was let down. Venue was nice, service was poor. Payed before receiving any drinks or food and a 5% service charge was added without prior acknowledgment. Orders were incorrect and included items that were asked to be removed (as confirmed on the receipt) and the chicken sandwich had the smallest bit of tough chicken you ever could see, all for £50 for 3 people. Feel fleeced.

We have been many times before and made a special journey to come back...but whoever hired the lady behind the bar needs a serious look at the staff they hire...unwelcoming, quite rude and all in all not someone who should be working in a great place like this....such a shame. Would have spent more ( as usual ) but just wanted to get out.

Lovely food. Lovely atmosphere. Very good service.

Staying in Ambleside for a few nights and have been to the Flying Fleece two nights in a row for something to eat. Very nice food and great service from staff. Josie made us feel very welcome.

Beautiful location and great food, highly recommend the cray fish starter. Perfect for dogs, they even get a doggy menu

Terrible table service waited 20mins for our first drink!

Below par Sunday roast. Outdoor seating area is pleasant for a drink.

Food ordered: 3-meat roast, vegan roast, cauliflower cheese Food: - 3 bits of cabbage - Thinly sliced meat - Very thin skin to potatoes, but still the inside is not fully cooked - Gravy very thin - Vegan roast more like frozen patty roast - Frozen veg (peas and carrots) (very obvious water to the vegetables) - Every piece of food was under salted during cooking and no flavours were allowed to flourish - Sourness to the cauliflower cheese, the cream was not fresh enough Service: - Abrubt - Spilled my drink on the walk to the table without mention Environment: - The music from the accompanying venue is too loud and dance themed - Some wobbly tables

Visited on a nice sunny day and sat in the courtyard at the front of the pub which was nice and busy with a good atmosphere. Service was excellent, very quick and young lady serving us was very friendly and chatted to us about how she went paddle boarding after work. Drinks came quickly, followed swiftly by the food. My wife had the chicken pie, chunky chips, mushy peas and gravy. Enjoyed the meal but unimpressed by thimble sized portion of mushy Peas. Cheap ingredient chef, go for big portions! I had the cheese and caramelised onion artisan ciabatta with fries and slaw. Very disappointing, zero effort by the chef here, I make better at home! As for the Artisan Bakery Ciabatta I suggest you ditch the artisan Bakery and pop to Tesco, the ciabattas will be much better from there! This was dry and very plain, nothing artisan about it. As little grated cheddar as you could get away with and a spoon of caramelised onion slapped haphazardly on top. This is a sandwich, it's not difficult. You have to do better than that. A real shame because staff, courtyard etc were great.

Lovely pub 3 floors, staff welcoming, food is too a good standard. Dog friendly.Seating outside too.

As a pub, great for a pint etc.. Food was OK, always worrying when it takes 3 mins from order to being on the table.

Great food & super service from Calum!

Lovely building. Not bad beer. What I don't like is how the bar staff reach round and add 5% service charge on the contactless machine before you pay!! Is this company policy? I understand for table service, but being served at a bar?🙄

Bustling pub, good food in a great location

Found staff very rude and arrogant, so sadly won’t be rushing back Beer garden was lovely though

WiFi password (sept 2024!): father

What a gem, fabulous staff and very welcoming, thoroughly enjoyed the food here, plenty of food on the plates but unfortunately was too much for us to polish off , we had the cheese and onion pie the pie is pretty big but enjoyable, chips and mushy peas was spot on very fluffy chips and the best onion rings I've had in ages. Fabulous place for food if you are in the area.

Popped in while waiting for a friend and was not expecting much. Looks like a bit of a chain from outside but good service, friendly staff and the pastrami sandwich was lovely!

Wouldn't say its an excellent service but the food is valuable with its price.

Nice enough but staff a little grumpy.

We called in a couple, of times and it’s a nice enough place to stop for a drink. I personally was keen to keep returning as I found a new favourite beer.

Been here a few times over the years, revisited this weekend and appears to have gone down hill - dragged down by rude inattentive staff who clearly don’t want to be there 👍🏻

Blue moon beer was absolutely delicious!!!

This is our first time in Ambleside, and this pub was such a great shout for food, we ordered the Camembert, Mussels and BLT. All were gorgeous. The ladies working the floor and bar were genuinely so lovely, with a great sense of humour. Liv and Jenny especially. The jugs of sangria are massive, had a lovely experience- thank you!

Had really high hopes from looking online but there was abysmal service and we had to leave. Sat and waited for 20+ minutes, the young waiter looked at us waiting to be served and simply moved on.

Good atmosphere, food was overpriced for what it is. Wasn't impressed when our mains arrived and we were still eating our starters, poor!

Good beer but not much seating as it was full to the rafters. So felt a bit closed in but it had a clean pint. If there had been somewhere to sit we would have spent more money. But lack of seats for drinkers put us off. I'm sorry for a negative response.

Went for family meal. Tho this place is ideally situated. Gorgeous building. Great atmosphere when busy. Staff were nice. Polite. Smiley. I'm afraid the food was very mediocre. Very dry. Defenetly wasnt fresh. No veg whatsoever. Apart from very dry mushy peas on 2 plates. Child cumberland sausage. Which there was 2 of. One was so hard. I couldn't cut it. When mentioned. They did bring another. Fresh one. However there is no way it should have come out in the first place. Total disregard on the kitchen for customers that. I have eaten here before and was very nice. But that was couple of year back. To me the foods so far gone. I wont even attempt to eat here again. Not unless Gordon Ramsay comes back and sorts it like he did last time. Overall. Staff are friendly beer is good atmosphere is good. Place is amazing. Just let down by food. We spent £150 for our meal. Wasnt worth it. But I'm not one to not pay as we all had a good try at it. Hindsight should have walked and gone chippy.

Great service and super friendly staff. Cracking bar menu.

Staying in Ambleside visisted for evening meal. Food excellant, gammon perfectly cooked, wife had the curry which was very well made and a very generous portion.

Awful, a can't be bothered attitude from the staff at breakfast, obviously we were an inconvenience. Nice location but customer service non existent. Avoid.

Wouldn't serve a 20 year old with her parents as she didn't have ID

This is my first ever poor review and I don’t leave it lightly. This pub has poor standards with really poor food, massively overpriced and of such a poor quality. Never ever had a worse meal. The chips are cooked in old fat, they only seem to serve microwave meals. Such a poor experience and my partner ended up with food poisoning. Avoid.

A 'traditional' English pub in a typical tourist town. Good food. Service good, professional.

Nice pub in Ambleside. You can eat traditional pub food indoors or on the heated terrace. Quite a few people, good atmosphere and very good local beers.

Great place to have beer in Ambleside when the sun is shining , sat beside the river and Bridge house .

the staff weren’t very attentive, or helpful, we waited a long time after the meal for someone to come to us. We had the roast, which the pork was very dry and everything was swimming in gravy, so became a mush at the end. We ended up leaving early aswell, due to very loud live music, where we couldn’t hear eachother speak, and was abit annoying when going for a chilled out roast dinner.

Decent food (I had the curry) and a decent pint. Family friendly.

Grumpy male waiter (all the female staff had a smile on their face). Seemed he couldn’t be bothered working. Loud dance music blasting out from pub next door. Didn’t feel dog friendly rather allowing dogs .. just. Food was good.

As a solo traveller I found this the best place. Everything was great the staff, the service and the food. After being ignored in other establishments and leaving them this became my go to place. They always found me a table and even looked after my dog when I needed a rest break. Just fabulous.

Nice pub in the centre of ambleside good food and service.

Great food and great beer at a great price served by very friendly staff. Will be going back again next time I'm in ambleside

Came in because of the drizzle. But had a good lunch and beer!

Good staff and nice beef burger 👍

Called in for Sunday lunch whilst visiting the area on a day trip, lovely food at a great price

Having had lunch on Tuesday with my wife and granddaughter (very pleasant and enjoyable ) we returned along with my daughter for dinner the following evening. Food….very good. Ambiance….excellent. Service….excellent. In particular, Jenny proved to be so helpful, knowledgeable and so courteous it helped make our evening very enjoyable and quite relaxing. Many thanks…especially to Jenny!!! Colin

Great bar and restaurant service was good and so was the food. Will being going again

Popped in at 11.40 for brunch/breakfast with our daughter. Was told they had stopped breakfast at 11.30 as it was so busy, despite signs stating breakfast served until 12 (there were only 3 other parties in from what we could see). Was offered the Sunday lunch from 12, but couldn’t face that so declined. Just had a coffee/hot chocolate instead which was fine. Looked a nice enough venue but not the most accommodating on this occasion.

We visited here twice during our stay in Ambleside and our experience was amazing. Food on both occasions was fabulous. Very dog friendly and staff are very hard working and friendly. Shout out to Callum for his great service. Will definitely visit here next time we’re in Ambleside🙂

We had 2 meals on the terrace here. The Sunday lunch was superb but I didn't like the half roast chicken I had the next day, the flavour was very strange. However, everything else we had was good, the atmosphere on the terrace was great (especially Sunday, with live music) and it was good value.

Nice Bar/Restaurant at the 'top end' of Ambleside. Venue is spacious, with lots of seats/tables. We called in for Breakfast one Sunday Morning, it was early so was also peaceful and we didn't suffer any problems getting served (as others have complained) so Service was good 👍 Coffee was nice, breakfast was fine with nice ingredients however the Bacon could've been better, it looks like it's been cooked in the Oven (which is usually fine) but it had lots of white Albumin on it and it wasn't very crispy 🫤. On the flip-side, the Sausage looked great but were 'overcooked' and quite hard 👎 Overall it was worth a visit, price is pretty reasonable 👍

Not really a pub more like a restaurant not my scene

Ask for table outside. No problem they said. Asked if we should go to the bar to order drinks. No we will come over in a minute and take your order. Waited patiently for 30 minutes to be then told to order food at bar

Lovely bear garden great pub grub

We visited last time we stayed in Ambleside and enjoyed are visit so we retuned while staying again. Sorry to say this time was not as enjoyable. Could not fault the meal and the staff where mostly friendly. But the atmosphere was spoilt, we do not understand why they had to put the TV on for the football on a large screen out side, it’s really not that kind of pub/Restaurant. If we had of realised they where showing football we would of went somewhere else but it was not on when we arrived. They had people trying to enjoy the lovely Weather, (don’t get much of it lately ) eating and trying to relaxing and all you could hear was the football, luckily we had sat at a table a little away from the T.V but could still hear it. Felt sorry for people nearer the T.V as it was loud. it is busy for meals and drinks, so there is no reason to have the T.V on outside, maybe the football was ok for some but we did not want to sit and have a meal and drink with the loud football in the background we don’t come away to watch the football, We did intended to stay for Drinks but had our meal and left as was other people, they need to decide if the want to be a pub with football or a pub serving Meals in a nice Atmosphere.

Lovely lunch at the Flying Fleece food was very original and good value. Staff super efficient and very prompt service

Brilliant venue, really nice food and great service.

Lovely pub to sit outside with a beer or cider watching the world go by in the sunshine. We visited Ambleside whilst staying in Bowness last week. Knew where we were heading! Got in early so managed to get a nice table sat outside. Had a pint each and then after seeing Welsh rarebit on the menu, decided to stay for lunch. Service was excellent both at the bar and the table. Rarebit was very tasty, although I could've done with a bit more of the cheese (maybe that's just me?). Enjoyed it and will definitely be back when we head for the Lake District from home (Cornwall) again.

The best dining experience in ambleside

Was really looking forward to our meal. Big let down, had the roast pork,but was totally inedible,just a massive lump of fat on plate. Husband had vegan option,not much better.

Food was chain pub food nothing wrong with it.

This place was recommended for us to try and my first impression was it was busy and looked a nice place. I asked one of the staff if they had a table and he said he would go look and just left us waiting which didnt inspire me, however I later learned he was a young lad that was just learning the ropes so will cut him some slack on that. We were seated upstairs and were waited on by an excellent waitress called Josie L. Every now and then you get served by someone its a pleasure to meet she was one of these people. From the off she was personable and engaging and took our requests for slight alterations to certain dishes to accommodate us with a bit of light hearted banter, The food, starters good mussels, calamari and Macaroni cheese. Mains Burger, Half chicken, Steak Pie and Smoked haddock Rarebit all good nice portions and tasty. Apart from the initial blip which was well made up for by Josie the place is worth a visit.

We ate Ribs Eye. The meat was very dry, it's a dish we've eaten in many places before, but I've never had it this dry. The sauce was also insufficient. There was baked pasta on the side, it was delicious. I would not recommend this dish. However, we ate potatoes with parmesan and truffle oil, they were delicious. Apart from that, the atmosphere is very nice, the employees are very friendly and helpful.

Had lunch here. Nice sandwiches

Staff and particular the manager poor attitudes and attention. Manager was overheard making disparaging comments to staff about customer who had just walked in. Service was not worth the 5% service charge sneaked onto the bill. Noisy with competing TVs and music. We have passed by many times over the last few years thinking we must try here but horribly disappointing. Never again

Nice place. Good food, surprising.

Great staff and we had a delicious fish and chips, one of the best England has offered so far. Keep up the good work guys🫡 Thank you!

The picture is of a portion of gluten free fish and chips! It was awful and server didn't seem to be interested in rectifying the issue. I must say my husbands ordinary meal looked 100 times better

Great service and food, Staff excellent

Well received. Nice food. Friendly staff.

During our hiking roundtrip through the Lake District we were here twice. Once at the start and at the end. Every meal we ordered was fantastic and the staff was very accommodating. If you are a larger group, I suggest to book a table in advance, because tables are in high demand.

Our new favourite eatery in the area.

Great place and lovely food. Would highly recommend. 👍🏻

Cosy place in the city, placed along a small and nice stream. Food was fine, nothing bad there, nothing fancy either.

As I require a gluten free option I chose the gf fish and chips. I can honestly say it was the worst I've ever been presented with! It looked like so anaemic I thought it hadn't seen the frier! I ended up leaving it, the table server didn't really care even though I commented on it being a poor meal.

Just a quick pint, sat outside and enjoying the moment, great staff, nice place to pass an hour with friends

Beautiful converted mill building. Staff friendly and as it was a Sunday there was a live singer on who was fantastic. Atmosphere brilliant and food was so good. Fish n chips for my partner and half a roast chicken Sunday dinner for me. This is the third time we've been and its always been great.

Few teething issues with the till system and incorrect orders but the food was great and staff made up for the issues great.

Lovely meal fast service and an excellent singer on a Sunday evening. The Sunday Roast is a generous portion. They also accept reservations. Inside and outside tables too.

Good food at a reasonable price, but they add 10% on as an optional service charge without asking so not really optional.

Lovely place to eat, the food was delicious, the place is extremely busy so you may have to wait for a table, I found the staff to be very slow to serve you and abrupt , not very friendly, in fact two of them were hugging and kissing each other behind the bar in front of waiting customers, apart from that the bar is definitely worth a visit.

We just popped in for a drink and chat with friends. It got very busy outside whilst there.

I'm so pleased we decided to try here, The staff were lovely & so helpful. The food was amazing, we will be coming back & have already been recommending

Excellent food from a very good menu. Service was quick and staff polite and helpful. Reasonable prices considering the locality. Would definitely recomend

Sat outside so I didn't really see much inside. It looked nice. Staff spot on. Beer was really spot on. Fish Finger sandwiches were brilliant. I'll be back. 😊