Glenridding Walks

The National Trust's spectacular 65ft waterfall in a wooded gorge above Ullswater — the classic family waterfall walk near Glenridding. A short loop of roughly a mile climbs through a Victorian arboretum past stone bridges, with the falls at their thunderous best after rain. It's free to walk: people search "do you have to pay for Aira Force" expecting an entry fee, but you only pay to park. There's no swimming at the falls, and the lower paths are buggy-friendly. Dog-friendly throughout. For Aira Force as an attraction, see the Glenridding hub.

The famous circular walk around the whole of Ullswater — around 20 miles (the official Friends of the Ullswater Way route is 22), waymarked with daffodil signs. As a circular it has no official start; the two most popular are Glenridding (south) and Pooley Bridge (north), both with public car parks, and you can walk it in either direction. Fit walkers do the full loop in a day (~10–11 hrs); most people split it into stages and use the Ullswater Steamer or the 508 bus to return — Peter has walked it both as a full day and as a charity half-loop, so this really is a brilliant charity-challenge walk. The "walk a stage, Steamer back" model makes it perfect day-planner material — build it in the planner.

England's third-highest mountain (950m) and its most famous walk. The classic round from Glenridding goes UP Striding Edge — an exposed Grade 1 scramble along a genuine knife-edge — and DOWN Swirral Edge, passing Red Tarn and, with a short detour, the perfect pointed peak of Catstye Cam. It's roughly 8–11 miles, 5–7 hours and around 900m of ascent, and over 100,000 people climb it each year. Crucially, there's a choice of route: the scramble round via the edges, or the easier non-scramble line up the Greenside path and down Swirral that gets you to the same summit with far less exposure.