High Street

The best way up starts from Mardale Head, at the end of the long, narrow road along Haweswater. The car park is free and holds about 30 cars (postcode CA10 2RP), and no bus goes there. Walk round the head of the reservoir, cross Mardale Beck by the footbridge, and climb onto the ridge of Rough Crag. After the dip at Caspel Gate, which can be boggy, Long Stile climbs in a series of humps to the plateau, with Blea Water in its corrie on your left. The ridge looks sharp from below but is broad and never knife-edged. A drystone wall keeps you company, and there is only a little easy scrambling.

A good return goes south over Mardale Ill Bell, down to Nan Bield Pass and past Small Water back to the car. Hartsop by The Knott, Patterdale, Troutbeck and Kentmere all make longer days.

The summit is a wide grassy plateau with a trig pillar beside the wall. The view reaches the Pennines to the east and the Helvellyn range and the Southern Fells to the west.

Racecourse Hill

The Romans ran a road over the plateau between their forts at Brougham and Ambleside, keeping to the tops to avoid the wooded, marshy valleys. On a clear day you can still trace it, faintly in places. The summit is also called Racecourse Hill. Every 12 July, shepherds gathered here to hand back stray sheep, with wrestling and horse racing alongside, until the meetings ended in 1835.

Blea Water is the deepest tarn in the Lake District at about 61 metres. The village of Mardale lies drowned under the reservoir, and Riggindale below the summit was home to England's last golden eagle, which has not been seen since 2016.