Lingmell

Nearly everyone on the Brown Tongue path from Wasdale is heading for Scafell Pike, and most of them walk straight past Lingmell. That is a pity, because its top has one of the best views of Great Gable in the district.

Start at the National Trust car park at Brackenclose, at the head of Wast Water, where there is now a small visitor building. There is no bus into Wasdale. Follow the Scafell Pike path up Lingmell Gill for a short way, then fork left onto a fainter path up the grassy nose of Lingmell's south west ridge. It steepens as it goes and becomes stony near Goat Crags, but you never need your hands. Above the crags a vague path leads to the top. The more interesting alternative follows the path up the side of Piers Gill, the deep ravine on the fell's eastern flank. From Borrowdale the Corridor Route from Styhead reaches the same ground.

Coming down, most people drop to the grassy saddle of Lingmell Col and rejoin the main Scafell Pike path through Hollow Stones and down Brown Tongue.

What you see

The summit is a stony dome with a big, well built cairn on the brink of the northern crags, which drop hundreds of metres towards Lingmell Beck. Great Gable is straight across the valley and looks close to vertical from here. Scafell Pike and Great End are next door, and Wast Water leads the eye out to the Irish Sea.

In 1921 a walker called Edward Crump fell into Piers Gill in mist while coming off Scafell Pike. He lay there with a broken leg for well over a fortnight before climbers found him alive. The rescue team still gets called to the gill most years.