Start: Crown Inn, Tilberthwaite Avenue, Coniston, Cumbria LA21 8ED Tel: 01539 441243
(S/E) From the front door of the Crown Inn pub, turn right past the church. Bear left over the bridge across Church Beck and turn immediately right. Follow the narrow road past Meadow House. Immediately after the Sun Hotel, turn right (signposted to the Old Man and Levers Water). Pass through a farmyard onto the track beyond, which shortly crosses a side-stream of Church Beck then runs alongside the main beck.
(1) Shortly after Coniston Waterfall you reach the Miners’ Bridge. Follow the path ahead, still with Church Beck on your right. As the spoilheaps of the coppermines come into view, the path veers left and starts to climb the valley side, and the summit ridge of the Old Man (not on this route) comes into view. After a couple of gates through walls, the path climbs to meet the main path curving up from Walna Scar car park (away to your left).
(2) Turn right at the junction and then, shortly after, right again (leaving the main route up the Old Man). The path runs along a terrace below a juniper-hung crag on the left. It then passes above a quarry before passing over rocky ground and descending to the Pudding Stone, a prominent boulder next to Low Water Beck.
(3) Here there is an option for a Shorter route:
Cross the footbridge and take a rough path off to the right, downstream with the beck on your right. The path descends steeply by a series of small falls then bears left, leaving the beck, to run below Grey Crag. At the far end, cross another beck via a gated footbridge below the Levers Waterfalls and bear right past a mine adit on the left. Take the lower of the two tracks beyond, initially heading toward the bottom of the valley, then shortly leave it to follow the grassy course of an old leat on the left, which takes a fairly level path across the left-hand side of the valley, above the Paddy End water treatment works. When you meet another path at the foot of Tongue Brow, drop down to the right through a rocky breach in the leat, and rejoin the longer route at waymark 5 to bear left round the should of land.
If taking the longer route that is mapped here, cross Low Water Beck via the footbridge and climb the pitched path ahead. The path, alternately rocky and grassy (and boggy in places), leads up the slight ridge to the right of Boulder Valley to a minor col, where Levers Water comes into view. Descend half-left, passing above a fenced-off mineshaft.
(4) Turn right onto a minor path that passes below the same fenced shaft. The path then drops to pass the impressive slit entrances of two old mines (A). Beyond the entrances, the path descends to the shore of Levers Water and runs along to the dam. Ford the spillway, then take the descending path to the right. This heads down towards the Coppermines valley with the cascades of Levers Waterfall away to your right.
(5) When the main track zig-zags right towards the stream, rather than following it round, continue ahead on a narrow path. At the foot of Tongue Brow, this path drops down and right over the rocky remains of a collapsed mine leat. Bear left, round the shoulder of land, onto a rather rocky path that descends towards the prominent house and waterwheel. Pass under the aqueduct that would have carried water to the top of the waterwheel, then bear right past the wheel. Bear left and exit the Coppermines complex beyond the copper-painted slab. Keep left by the white-painted Youth Hostel then follow the main track down the valley, passing the footbridge to the terraced Irish Row on your left.
(6) Beyond the hydro scheme, the track descends to the Miners’ Bridge. Keep on down past Coniston Waterfall, then follow the descending track as it leaves the beck and leads above walled-off woodland before crossing a cattle grid.
(7) Ignore the path off to the left, signposted to Yew Tree Farm and Elterwater, continuing down the main track which shortly becomes a tarmacked road. Pass the rear of the Ruskin Museum to reach the main road. Turn right then left to return to the Crown Inn. (S/E)
