Scafell Pike

Wasdale gives the shortest climb, and on a summer weekend you will not have it to yourself. Park at the National Trust pay and display car park at Brackenclose, next to the campsite at the head of Wastwater, or on Wasdale Head green. The path follows Lingmell Gill, crosses it, then goes up the stone-pitched staircase of Brown Tongue into Hollow Stones. From there you can go right to Lingmell Col or straight up the scree towards Mickledore. Both lines end on the same bouldery plateau. Up and down is about 9 km, and most people take five or six hours.

The longer approaches are finer walks. From Seathwaite in Borrowdale you go up to Styhead and along the Corridor Route under Great End. From Great Langdale you climb Rossett Gill to Esk Hause and follow the ridge over Broad Crag. The Eskdale approach follows the River Esk up into wild, remote country.

Every route has rough ground. The top of the mountain is shattered rock, the highest boulder field in England, and the paths across it are marked mostly by cairns. Nothing needs hands, but it is slow and hard on ankles, and in cloud one stretch of boulders looks much like another.

The summit and its memorial

The summit has an Ordnance Survey trig point and a large stepped cairn platform. A Buttermere slate tablet set into the cairn records that Lord Leconfield gave the summit to the National Trust in 1919 in memory of the Lake District men killed in the First World War. On a clear day you can see Snowdonia, the Isle of Man and the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland, more than 100 miles away.