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Wastwater does not look like the other Lake District lakes. It is darker, colder, steeper-sided and more remote than Windermere or Derwentwater. The screes on its eastern shore — a continuous slope of loose rock falling from the summit of Illgill Head almost directly into the water — are among the most dramatic natural features in England. The mountains at its head — Scafell Pike, England's highest summit, and Great Gable, its most iconic profile — are the most serious mountains in the Lake District by any measure.
The valley is different in character from the popular Lakes precisely because it is harder to get to. There is one road in and one road out. The car park is small. The valley receives fewer visitors than Grasmere or Windermere by a significant margin, and those who do come tend to be walkers who are here for the high fells.
For the visitor who wants to see the Lake District at its most austere and most magnificent, Wastwater is the destination.
The view from the car park at the southern end of Wastwater — looking north along the lake, with the screes on the right and the mountains at the head — was voted Britain's favourite view in a Country Life poll in 2007 and has been used on the Lake District National Park logo. The vote was probably correct. The composition is almost impossibly good: the still dark water, the tremendous diagonal of the screes, the pyramid of Great Gable at the far end of the valley with Scafell Pike rising to its left.
This view is available within seconds of getting out of the car. No walking required.
The Wastwater Screes are approximately 600 metres high and approximately three kilometres long — a continuous slope of loose volcanic rock that has been accumulating at the base of Illgill Head since the last ice age. Below the waterline, the screes continue into the lake; at the deepest point, Wastwater is 79 metres deep, the deepest lake in England.
Walking on the screes is technically possible but not particularly recommended. The more satisfying approach is to walk the western shore path, which gives you the screes across the water at their most dramatic, reflected in the surface on still days in extraordinary doubling compositions.
The valley head at Wasdale Head is one of the smallest communities in England — a church, a pub and a few farms at the junction of valleys leading to Scafell Pike and Great Gable. The church is tiny, ancient and completely without pretension; it contains a memorial window to those who died on the surrounding fells.
The pub, the Wasdale Head Inn, is historically significant as the birthplace of British rock climbing — the sport was effectively invented on the crags above this valley in the 1880s and 1890s, when a group of mountaineers realised that the techniques they had developed on these Cumbrian crags transferred to the Alps. The names — Napes Needle on Great Gable, Broad Stand on Scafell — are still part of the vocabulary of British climbing.
Wastwater is the most remote of the accessible Lake District lakes. The approach from the west is via Gosforth and Santon Bridge; from the east via Hardknott and Wrynose Passes (extremely narrow, not suitable for large vehicles). Allow an hour from Windermere.
A bespoke tour to the western Lakes can combine Wastwater with Ennerdale, Eskdale and the Hardknott Fort — a full day in the least-visited and most dramatic corner of the National Park.
Wastwater and the western Lakes can be explored on a bespoke tour.