The walk starts from the small National Trust car park at Ashness Bridge (CA12 5UN), on the road from the Borrowdale lakeside up to Watendlath. It has around 15 spaces and is very popular, so get there early. The road up from the lake is steep and narrow with passing places. National Trust members park free. Otherwise it's £7 for up to 2 hours, £8 for up to 4 hours or £9.50 for the day, and charges apply at all times, so for this walk of 3½ to 4½ hours get the all-day ticket. You can pay by phone here, but the signal in the valley is very limited, so set up the JustPark app before you go or bring change. There are no toilets. Check the latest prices here.

From the top of Walla Crag you look down on the islands at the north end of Derwentwater. One of them is Lord's Island, named after the Earls of Derwentwater, the Radclyffe family, who had a fine house there from about 1450, with a drawbridge across to the shore. The family moved away around 1623 and the house fell into ruin. Its stone is thought to have been carted into Keswick to rebuild the Moot Hall in 1695.

The last Earl, James Radclyffe, was born in 1689. His mother was a daughter of King Charles II, and he grew up at the exiled Stuart court in France as a companion to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Stuart claimant to the throne. He first came to see his Cumberland estates in 1710. In October 1715 he joined the Jacobite rising with a small band of gentlemen and servants, but the rebels were beaten at Preston and he was taken to the Tower of London.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death. His wife, the Countess, went into the king's bedchamber and begged George I in French to spare him, but the government wanted to make an example of him. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 24 February 1716, aged just 26. The Northern Lights were said to be unusually bright that day, and they became known as Lord Derwentwater's Lights. His estates were confiscated, and in 1748 they were given to Greenwich Hospital.

On the ridge between High Seat and Bleaberry Fell is a spot with the odd name of Threefooted Brandreth. A brandreth was a three-legged stand set in an oven to hold a griddle when baking cakes. Just below it, on the eastern side of the ridge and off our path, is a small memorial on a shallow saddle above Mere Gill.

On 9 March 1880 a man called John Litt was out on these fells following the Blencathra Foxhounds. According to the Keswick newspaper of the time, he was last seen resting on the bog with others, watching the hounds working in the valley below. He looked a little tired but didn't complain, and the hunters, caught up in the chase, never looked back. He did not come home that night.

Early the next morning a group of volunteers went out to look for him. One of them, David Powley, went straight to Mr Oliver, the shepherd on Castlerigg Fell, who was probably the last person to have been with Litt. The two men headed for the place where they had parted, taking a dog with them, and it found his body not fifteen yards from where they were making for. Wainwright later described the memorial as two upright stones, one carrying a round plate reading "In memory of J Litt who died March 9, 1880".