England's greatest walk (that you’ve never heard of)

UPPER ESKDALE is a paradox. It lies in the heart of England’s most impressive mountain landscape, surrounded by wonderful wreckages of ancient volcanic uproar. It is ringed by a string of fells that read like a list of A-list invitees at the hillwalking Oscars: Crinkle Crags, Bowfell, Esk Pike, Great End, and the glamorous power couple of the bash, Scafell and Scafell Pike. Purely on the basis of the fells it covers, the long horseshoe that lassos all the hills above Eskdale must logically be England’s greatest walk, and a mountain round to rank alongside the best Britain has to offer.

If you reach Upper Eskdale by my favourite route, you walk up through a long, narrowing gorge studded with booming waterfalls, then emerge into something that feels like England’s answer to a Himalayan sanctuary: a hanging valley reached only by the dedicated pilgrim of the Lake District’s wilder corners. You are, in a sense, in the heartland of the Lake District, the hall of its most impressive mountain gods. And the Lake District attracts 20 million visitors a year, so you might expect it to be busy;