Nestling at the foot of Shepherds Crag, our hotel is ideally situated for walking through the Jaws of Borrowdale. Our twice daily walk is from the front of the hotel, crossing the main road and following the ‘right of way’ over the fields alongside the stream ‘Comb Gill’, after leaving the stream we continued across the fields to the banks of the River Derwent, which we follow till we reach the ‘Chinese Bridge’, a local landmark in the Borrowdale valley. Here there are beautiful views of the Skiddaw Massif to the North and looking South into the Jaws of the valley stands ‘Castle Crag’(950ft) the smallest of all the Wainwright fells. As you cross the bridge you cannot miss the skyline ahead of you, the peaks of Cat Bells (1480ft) to the right, Maiden Moor to the left of that and to the left of that the rugged peak of High Spy (2,142ft). As you pass through the metalled gate ahead of you, the path crosses several hundred yards of marshland, to compensate for that and to stop your feet from getting wet, a specific walkway has been constructed a metre above the ground which leads you down to the water’s edge at the ‘Great Bay’ and ‘Park Nab’. On reaching the water’s edge, the path changes back to hard standing and skirts around the Southern end of Derwent water. From the hotel it is a steady thirty-minute walk to this point. I always stop for a few moments at the waters edge to let the dogs have a paddle in the lake and secondly to listen to the birdsong, which is quite different to home with Willow Warbler, Oyster Catcher, Tree Pipit, Common Sandpiper, Mistle Thrush and Blue Tit filling the air with their melodic tunes. We retrace our steps back to the hotel but stopping again at the bridge to listen to and watch the rock climbers ascending Shepherds Crag in the foreground. The fields from the bridge back to the hotel are full of grazing Herdwick sheep, during our stay in the lakes they were accompanied with their newborn black lambs. The Herdwicks are very much native to the Lake District and are raised for their carpet wool and meat. As well as all the above and being surrounded by beautiful mountains this is a very pleasant and enjoyable flat walk and one that I, Meg and Gracie and Jenny never tire of doing.