Nab Scar

Most walkers reach the top in 45 minutes to an hour and a quarter from Rydal, and about the same back down — it is roughly 450 m of ascent packed into a short distance. That steepness is the whole story: the climb is relentless from the first field, on a pitched stone staircase that gains height fast and gives you the view almost immediately. Allow longer than the distance suggests going up, and be honest with your knees coming down: the same pitching that makes the ascent efficient makes the descent hard work.

Short but genuinely steep — effort rather than difficulty. There is no scrambling and no exposure; the path is clear and well-made the whole way. What catches people out is that the climbing starts immediately and barely relents, so it feels harder than a 450 m fell ought to. If you want it as part of a bigger day, our walked Fairfield Horseshoe starts over Nab Scar and runs to 16.9 km with 925 m of ascent — the little fell is the horseshoe's front door.

It is two old landscape words doing exactly what they say. A nab is a projecting spur or headland of a hill — the blunt nose where a ridge runs out — and a scar (from Old Norse sker) is a bare rock face or cliff. So "Nab Scar" is the rocky face on the end of the spur, which is precisely what you see from Rydal: the abrupt southern end of the ridge running down from Heron Pike and Fairfield. Lakeland is full of these plain-speaking names once you know the words.

Yes — 450 m in Wainwright's Eastern Fells, and one of the lowest in that book. It is really the southern shoulder of Heron Pike rather than a separate mountain, but Wainwright gave it its own chapter and it earns the visit on view alone: Windermere, Rydal Water and Grasmere all laid out below within an hour of leaving the road.

From Rydal, on the A591 between Ambleside and Grasmere — the path climbs past Rydal Mount and up through the fields onto the fell. Parking is the limiting factor: the small area by Rydal church and the roadside spaces fill quickly, and the 555 bus between Ambleside, Grasmere and Keswick stops at Rydal, which makes this one of the easier fells to do without a car.