Scenic Point in Lancashire

Cartmel is one of the most charming and most complete small villages in the Lake District, a medieval settlement in the low-lying Cartmel Peninsula south of the main Lake District mountains whose combination of the magnificent Augustinian priory church, the medieval gatehouse, the racecourse on the village green and the reputation for exceptional food, particularly the Cartmel sticky toffee pudding, creates one of the most rewarding and most distinctive small destinations in Cumbria. The village retains its medieval character in an unusually complete form for a settlement of its age and quality. The Cartmel Priory, one of the finest medieval churches in Cumbria, was founded in 1190 and its survival through the Dissolution is attributed to its role as the parish church of the local community, a status that protected it when the adjacent monastic buildings were destroyed. The interior contains an exceptional collection of medieval misericords, monuments and stained glass that makes it one of the most rewarding ecclesiastical visits in the northwest of England. The uniquely positioned diagonal tower, crossing the roof at an angle to the building below, is the most architecturally distinctive feature of a church of considerable overall quality. The village racecourse, one of the smallest and most atmospheric in England, hosts meetings on the Whitsun and August Bank Holiday weekends that have been held here since the seventeenth century and create a unique atmosphere combining horse racing with the character of a medieval village green.

The Forest of Bowland is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Lancashire and North Yorkshire, a large upland area of heather moorland, gritstone hills and limestone valleys between the Yorkshire Dales and the Ribble Valley whose combination of the open moorland scenery, the excellent walking available on the Bowland fells and the characteristic landscape of drystone walls and field barns of the surrounding farmland creates one of the finest and least visited upland landscapes in northern England. The name Forest is used in its medieval sense of hunting ground rather than woodland. The moorlands of Bowland are among the finest habitats for upland birds in northern England, supporting breeding populations of merlin, peregrine falcon, hen harrier, short-eared owl, curlew and golden plover in concentrations that make the area one of the most significant upland bird habitats outside the Scottish Highlands. The hen harrier, in particular, breeds in Bowland in one of the most important southern populations in England, the open heather moorland providing the nesting and hunting habitat this species requires. The Trough of Bowland, a road pass crossing the highest part of the AONB, provides access to the finest moorland scenery and the starting point for the major walking routes onto the Bowland fells. The combination of the walking, the birdwatching and the characteristic Lancashire moorland landscape makes Bowland one of the most rewarding natural heritage destinations in the northwest.

The Langdale Pikes are the most distinctive and most instantly recognisable mountain profile in the Lake District, a pair of rocky summits — Harrison Stickle at 736 metres and Pike of Stickle at 709 metres — that rise above Great Langdale in a profile of clean mountain architecture visible from far across the Lake District and providing one of the most satisfying ridge walks available in the national park. The combination of the distinctive profile, the excellent walking on the summit ridge and the famous views of Great Langdale below make the Pikes one of the essential walking destinations in the Lake District. The Neolithic stone axe factory on the slopes below Pike of Stickle is one of the most significant prehistoric industrial sites in Britain, the volcanic tuff of the fell providing a stone of exceptional quality for axe production that was traded across Neolithic Britain in large quantities. Axes from the Langdale workings have been found as far afield as southern England and Ireland, demonstrating the extent of the Neolithic exchange network that distributed this particular stone over such extraordinary distances from this remote Lakeland source. The walk from the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel at the valley head up to the Pikes provides one of the classic short mountain ascents in the national park, the path ascending steeply from the valley floor to the ridge with increasingly dramatic views of the surrounding fells and the valley below. The Langdale valley itself, with the Blea Tarn and the views to the Coniston Fells, is one of the finest valley landscapes in the Lake District.

Morecambe Bay is the largest expanse of intertidal sand and mudflat in Britain, a great tidal bay of approximately 310 square kilometres between the Lancashire coast and the Furness Peninsula whose combination of extraordinary wildlife spectacle, dramatic views of the Cumbrian mountains and the historic danger of quicksand and fast-moving tides creates one of the most powerful and most distinctive coastal landscapes in northern England. The wader flocks of Morecambe Bay are among the most impressive wildlife spectacles available in Britain, the vast mudflats supporting hundreds of thousands of dunlin, knot, oystercatcher, redshank and other wader species throughout winter. The spectacle of a large wader roost when the rising tide pushes birds onto the high-tide roost is one of the most extraordinary natural events available at any British wetland. The guided cross-bay walks with the official Queen's Guide to the Sands provide one of the most adventurous and most memorable outdoor experiences in Lancashire, the crossing of the six miles of sand and channels following ancient routes used since the Roman period.

Pendle Hill is a prominent moorland mass rising to 557 metres from the Lancashire plain south of Clitheroe, a hill whose dark and brooding profile and its association with the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612 have combined to give it an atmosphere of dark legend that persists to the present day and makes it one of the most evocative and most visited moorland hills in northern England. The trials of the Pendle Witches, in which twenty people from the hamlets around the hill were accused of witchcraft and ten eventually executed, represent one of the largest and most documented witch trials in English history and have given Pendle Hill a reputation that is simultaneously historical, folkloric and commercially celebrated. The witch trials arose from a complex of local disputes, poverty, fear and the zealotry of the new witch-hunting climate encouraged by James I, whose personal interest in witchcraft produced the Witchcraft Act of 1604 under which the accused were prosecuted. The principal accused came from two local families, the Demdikes and the Chattoxes, whose competing claims of magical power and mutual accusations created the chain of events that led to the Lancaster Assizes. The detailed account written by the court clerk Thomas Potts in 1613 provides an unusually complete record of the trial and the testimonies given. George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, climbed Pendle Hill in 1652 and experienced a vision from the summit that he described as seeing a great people to be gathered, an event that inspired his subsequent mission and makes Pendle Hill a place of Quaker pilgrimage as well as a site of witch legend. The summit walk from Barley or from the north side via Nick o' Pendle provides excellent moorland walking with outstanding views across Lancashire to the Fylde Coast and the Irish Sea.

The Ribblehead Viaduct carrying the Settle to Carlisle railway across the limestone valley at the head of Ribblesdale in the Yorkshire Dales is one of the most iconic and most photographed pieces of Victorian railway engineering in Britain, a structure of twenty-four arches spanning nearly 500 metres across the valley floor at a maximum height of 32 metres whose combination of bold engineering, Yorkshire millstone grit construction and dramatic setting below the peak of Whernside creates one of the defining images of the Dales landscape. Built between 1869 and 1875 by the Midland Railway using a workforce of over two thousand navvies who lived in temporary settlements around the construction site, the viaduct was nearly demolished in the 1980s before a campaign saved both the structure and the entire Settle to Carlisle line. The construction of the Ribblehead Viaduct and the Settle to Carlisle Railway was one of the most ambitious engineering undertakings of the Victorian period, driven by the Midland Railway's determination to reach Scotland by its own route without dependence on the competing companies whose lines provided the existing connections. The exposed and difficult terrain of the Yorkshire Dales and the Cumbrian fells required the construction of numerous tunnels, viaducts and embankments in challenging conditions, and the navvy camps established at Ribblehead during construction grew into temporary towns of several thousand people whose presence is recorded in the registers of the isolated moorland churches. The viaduct can be approached from the Ribblehead Station car park on the B6255 road, and the walk across the valley floor to the base of the piers provides close appreciation of the scale and quality of the masonry. The Three Peaks circular walk using Pen y Ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside as its targets passes close to the viaduct and the wide Ingleborough summit provides an aerial perspective on the structure in its landscape setting.

Tarn Hows in the Lake District National Park is one of the most visited and most beloved landscapes in Britain, a tarn set among larch, Scots pine and mixed woodland whose combination of the reflective water, the surrounding trees and the gentle hills creates a scene of such perfect composition it appears almost designed rather than natural. The National Trust manages the surrounding area and the walking circuit of the tarn is one of the most popular short walks in the Lake District. The tarn is in fact partly artificial, created in the late nineteenth century when a landowner dammed several smaller tarns to create the single larger water body visible today. The planting of the surrounding woodland that frames the tarn so perfectly was also part of the Victorian landscape improvement. Beatrix Potter owned the Tarn Hows area as part of her conservation programme and bequeathed it to the National Trust. The Red Squirrel Trust maintains a population of native red squirrels around Tarn Hows and the squirrels can often be observed at feeders near the car park. The combination of the accessible circular walk, the scenic quality and the wildlife interest make Tarn Hows one of the most visited and most consistently appreciated short walks in the Lake District.