Look at the water. No road runs along this shore. No village stands on these banks. Just a long, clear glacial lake held between steep fells, a rocky path picking its way around a scrambly little headland, and the whole wild valley opening ahead of you. Of all the lakes in Lakeland, this is the quiet one — and you have it almost to yourself.
Ennerdale Water is the most westerly of the great lakes, and by common agreement the wildest. It is the only large Lakeland water with no road along its shore and no settlement on its banks — a rare thing in a national park loved almost to distraction. The lake was gouged out by a glacier in the last Ice Age, and it lies about four kilometres long and some forty-five metres deep, cold and clean.
It is fed by the River Liza tumbling down from the high fells, and it drains westward by the River Ehen toward the Irish Sea you left behind. Early on this stage of the walk, the Coast to Coast traces the lake's southern shore, scrambling around the rocky prow of Anglers Crag before turning up the long forested valley toward the mountains at its head.
The whole dale is now the heart of Wild Ennerdale, a pioneering rewilding project letting the river wander and the woods return to something close to their natural state. After the busy, cherished shores of the better-known lakes, Ennerdale feels like a step back in time — a glimpse of how much of this landscape looked before the roads and the car parks arrived, and a promise of the emptier country to come.
Here is what to look for. First, Anglers Crag itself, where the path leaves the easy shoreline and picks a rocky, hands-on line around a small headland dropping straight to the water — take it slowly and mind your feet. Second, just beyond the crag, look for the natural rock seat known as Robin Hood's Chair, a slab that has borrowed the outlaw's famous name.
Third, notice what is missing: no tarmac, no car parks crowding the shore, no houses — only fell, forest and water, the way much of Lakeland once looked. Fourth, follow the valley opening up ahead, where dark ranks of conifer are slowly giving way to native trees and open ground as the rewilding takes hold.
And fifth, find the River Liza where it feeds the lake, a bright braided stream now left free to shift its own gravel beds and carve its own course across the valley floor. That rock beyond Anglers Crag is worth a smile. All across the north of England you will meet Robin Hood's name fastened onto crags, wells, chairs, bays and stones — and the great walk itself ends at Robin Hood's Bay on the far coast.
Yet the truth is that most of these places have no real connection to the outlaw at all. His legend simply grew so large that people hung it on any striking rock or handsome view that seemed to deserve a story.
So here on a wild Cumbrian shore, hundreds of miles and hundreds of years from Sherwood, a lonely slab of rock became Robin Hood's Chair — a small piece of folklore, invented for the pleasure of it, waiting quietly for you to walk past. From the head of the lake the valley narrows and climbs toward the highest ground of the walk.
Ahead, ringed by great fells, stands Black Sail Hut — a tiny former shepherd's bothy that is now England's most remote youth hostel, reachable only on foot or by bike. Keep to the path, watch the weather gathering on the tops, and press on up the dale. Walk safe.
