Little Salkeld, Lacy's Caves, Glassonby, Long Meg and her Daughters

Little Salkeld at the start of the walk is a red sandstone village with a large 19th-century hall, largely concealed behind ivy-covered walls. More accessible is the restored 19th-century working water mill. To the west of the village runs the Settle to Carlisle Railway, opened in 1876; part of the route is very close to the line, offering a chance for a close-up view of a steam train on its way to or from Carlisle. The walk continues through what were the sidings of the Long Meg gypsum mine (the material was used in Plaster of Paris and plasterboard, the latter for making sulfuric acid), where rusting notices will interest railway buffs.

The walk continues to follow the riverbank, which is colourful with Himalayan balsam and butterbur, and passes through the beeches and oaks of Cave Wood. Then five caves appear, cut into the sandstone cliff which drops here to the water. These were cut out of the soft rock for the eccentric Colonel Samuel Lacy, the owner of Salkeld Hall, around 1867 and are still named after him. Some say Lacy's Caves were wine cellars, others that he employed a man to live in them as a hermit.

The walk continues through a plantation of spruce, yew, cypress, and sycamore, and then crosses pastures sloping down to the river to meet the Glassonby to Kirkoswald road. The road is followed to Glassonby and beyond to tracks past an old church which lead towards a prehistoric site of international importance.

Long Meg and her Daughters, built around 1750 BC, is a younger site than Stonehenge, and like the more famous stone circle it is presumed to have been used as an astronomical tool. Long Meg and her Daughters is the second largest prehistoric circle in the country. Standing outside the circle, Meg is a single 15-foot-tall megalith. When people attempt to count the daughters, the totals reached are mysteriously inconsistent, usually between 63 and 69. The legend is that if anyone does get the number of stones right they will come to life as the daughters, or that the devil will appear (let's hope it's not the latter!).

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot.