The walk starts from the Forestry England car park at Dodd Wood (CA12 4QE), on the A591 about 3 miles north of Keswick, opposite the entrance to Mirehouse. It's open 24 hours and you pay on the way out at the machine by the toilet block (card or contactless), or online with Park with Ease within 48 hours. The first 20 minutes are free, then it's £2.10 for the first hour and 55p for each 15 minutes after that, up to £13 for the whole day, so expect to pay around £9 to £13 for this walk. Forestry England members park for free; check the latest prices here.

On 21 August 1815 a crowd climbed Skiddaw to celebrate the victory at Waterloo. The poets Robert Southey and William Wordsworth were there with their families, and the party feasted on roast beef and plum pudding boiled on the summit. Punch was drunk with toasts to the Prince Regent, the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blücher, and cannon fire passed each toast on to the valley below.

Southey called it the finest bonfire he ever saw. Balls of tow and turpentine were set alight and rolled down the mountainside, and everyone sang Rule Britannia and God Save the King around the flames. At about ten o'clock the party headed down by torchlight, reaching Keswick at midnight, where fireworks and a fire balloon carrying the words Wellington and Waterloo finished the night.

The only mishap came when somebody kicked over the kettle of boiling water meant for the punch. Water was scarce on the summit, so once it ran out the rum was drunk neat. An inquiry found that the culprit was Wordsworth, and Southey led the company in a mocking song at his friend's expense.

In 2001 a pair of ospreys nested beside Bassenthwaite Lake, the first to breed in the Lake District for over 150 years. Before then there was no record of ospreys nesting anywhere in England since the 1830s. The Lake District Osprey Project had built a nest platform in Wythop Woods, overlooking the lake, to tempt them, and that first pair raised one chick.

Ospreys have come back every year since, using different nest sites and raising at least one chick most years. They usually arrive in late March or early April, the eggs are laid towards the end of April and the chicks hatch in early June. In mid to late August they set off on a 3,000 mile flight to West Africa for the winter, and satellite tracking has shown them covering up to about 270 miles in a single day.

For many years staffed viewpoints in Dodd Wood, at the start of this walk, let visitors watch the nest through telescopes. The Lake District Osprey Project was wound up in 2022 because ospreys were breeding around the Lake District again, and the Dodd Wood viewpoint has closed since the birds moved to a nest that is harder to see. Bring binoculars and you may still spot them fishing over Bassenthwaite Lake in summer, or see them from the viewing platform at Foulshaw Moss in south Cumbria.