About an hour and a half, not counting rests, is enough for the climb; and rather more than an hour for the descent. From the village, for the first ten minutes, we can take two alternative routes. Leaving the Black Bull on the left, one road goes up past a wooden bridge which leads to the Old Forge, and by Holywath Cottage and the gate of Holywath (J. W. H. Barratt, Esq., J.P.) and the cottages of Silverbank, through a gate opening upon the fell. Turn to the left, past sandpits in a fragment of moraine left by the ancient glacier which, at the end of the Ice Age, must once have filled the copper-mines valley and broken off here, with toppling pinnacles and blue cavern, just like a glacier in Switzerland. Note an ice-smoothed rock on the right, showing basalt in section. Among the crannies of Lang Crags, which tower above, broken hexagonal pillars of basalt may be found in the screes, not too large to carry off as specimens. In ten minutes the miniature Alpine road, high above a deep ravine, leads to the Gillhead Waterfall and Bridge. An alternative start may be made to the right of the Post Office, and up the lane to left of the Sun Hotel; through the gate at Dixon Ground, and over a wooden bridge beneath the mineral siding which forms the actual terminus of the railway. Another wooden bridge leads only to the grounds of Holywath, but affords a fine sight of the rocky torrent bed with Coniston limestone exposed on the Holywath side. The Coniston limestone is a narrow band of dark blue rock, with black holes in it, made by the weathering-out of nodules. It lies between the softer blue clay-slates we have left, which form the lower undulating hills and moorlands, and the hard volcanic rocks which form the higher crags and mountains. The cartroad to the right, over the Gillhead Bridge, leads to the copper mines and up to Leverswater, from which the Old Man can be climbed, but by a much longer route. We take the gate and rough path to the left, after a look at the fine glaciated rocks across the bridge, apparently fresh from the chisel of the sculpturing ice; the long grooves betray the direction in which the glacier slid over them in its fall down the ravine. From a stile over the wall the copper mines become visible above the flat valley-bottom, filled with sand from the crushing of the ore. The path leads up to the back of the Scrow among parsley fern and club moss, and fifteen minutes from the bridge bring us through a sheepfold to another stile from which Weatherlam is finely seen on the right, and on the left the tall cascade from Lowwater. A short ten minutes more, and we reach the hause (_háls_ or neck) joining the crag of the Bell (to the left) with the ridge of the Old Man up which our way winds.