What to do with an inheritance...

You say that an income stream would be desirable, not a great deal of income from cash savings, and dividends are not a lot to shout about. As dividends are exposed to the risks that go with equities, then it is your choice.
We are nearer retirement than you, but have no regrets being heavy in to gold for most of our cash retirement pot. You should consider exposure to gold.
Here are two links you can study, as MSE's 'resident gold expert' 😉I'm happy to give more info..._
http://moneyweek.com/a-beginners-guide-to-investing-in-gold/
http://goldprice.org

Unlike with shares in companies held through funds, gold doesn't pay any dividends, or generate business profits to re-invest in itself and create value - and unlike a bank running a savings account or a peer-to peer borrower asking for a loan, there is there is nobody to pay you an ongoing income as a "thanks" for giving them the use of your funds.

So with the original criteria of creating as much income as possible without taking risk, gold is terrible, because it doesn't create any income and its value can change drastically ; it bobbles around in value so like with shares you may end up with more or less than you started with over various time periods, and someone dead set on "zero risk" should steer well clear.

Still over the long long term it may be better than cash as a hedge against inflation because the same speculative reasons that people hold it now, will probably endure for a few decades yet. If you are going to already have a portfolio of investments it can diversify your returns by sometimes going up when shares go down or vice versa. So I'm not saying completely ignore the idea, as any ideas are better than doing nothing - but if you don't already have any investments it's probably a poor place to start because of it fundamentally not producing any "returns", while carrying risk.

If you just want to hedge against inflation you could go out now and buy a few years worth of toilet paper and tinned food as those sorts of things will go up in cost over time, so literally buying them today will definitely preserve your ability to have those items in a few years, while buying a bar of gold in the hope that it goes up in value faster than the things you want to spend it on, is just guesswork.