***

Branstree and Selside Pike from Mardale Head

A mountain walk with everything: rough paths, peat bogs, waterfalls, a steep descent, and all with fantastic views tinged with the remoteness of this quiet Lakeland area.

As you drop steeply down to Haweswater on the Corpse Road imagine the people of Mardale taking their dead over that path to Swindale Head and on to the burial ground at Shap. The last such journey was undertaken in 1736 when finally the village church was allowed its own cemetery. Ironically when the valley was flooded for the Haweswater reservoir the remains where moved to Shap, and so claimed them all in the end.