No grouping of fells can ever be entirely satisfactory, but in this arrangement of walks, the reader is invited to explore a part of the Lake District that is for the most part comparatively little known, certainly compared with the honeypots that flank the central thrust from Windermere northwards to Keswick. The northern fells comprise two principal mountains, Skiddaw and Blencathra, that conceal a rash of lesser summits behind them, in the silent area known as Back o' Skidda'. And it is easy to see how appropriate was Southey's reference to 'My neighbour Skiddaw', for nowhere in Britain does a mountain so dominate a town as Skiddaw does Keswick, looming above the town like a benevolent old giant.
The area vaguely called the north-western fells reaches westwards from Bassenthwaite lake and Derwent Water to embrace to lonely summits of Whinlatter and the lakes of Buttermere and the Vale of Lorton. Whinlatter in particular has seen extensive development of its great forest for recreational use, yet there remains just beyond its boundaries an area of soft, moulded fells that slip quietly down to the sea. Great fells there are, too, and the walks in this book visit as many as space reasonably allows, consistent with a desire to encourage walkers to explore less popular highways and byways. Nowhere is more intimate and appealing that the lower Newlands valley, nor anywhere more magnificent for the walker than the fells than surround it.
A visit to Loweswater takes walkers in a clockwise direction for no reason other than the fact that to walk anti-clockwise leads first to the shores of Loweswater's lake, with a very real degree of probability that you would go no further, so enchanting is the lake and the woodlands of Holme Wood beside it. The same will be said of the other regions visited in this series of books, but among the north-western fells there is a relaxing sense of ease and contentment that is almost tangible.
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