Langdale Pikes
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.