The simplest way down is along Little Arrow Edge. The route can be found, even if clouds blot out bearings and landmarks, thus. In the cairn on the top of the Old Man there is a kind of doorway. You leave that doorway square behind you, and walk as straight as you can forward into the fog--not rapidly enough to go over the edge by mistake, but confidently. Your natural instincts will make you trend a trifle to the left, which is right and proper. It you have a compass, steer south south-east. In five minutes by the watch you will be well on the grass-grown arête, thinly set with slate-slabs, but affording easy walking. Keep the grass on a slightly increasing downward slope; do not go down steep places either to right or to left, and in ten minutes more you will strike a ledge or shelf which runs all across the breast of the Old Man mountain, with a boggy stream running through it--not straight down the mountain, but across it. If you strike this shelf at its highest point, where there is no definite stream but only a narrow bit of bog from which the stream flows, you are right. If you find the stream flowing to your right hand, bear more to the left after crossing it. Five minutes more of jolting down over grass, among rough rocks which can easily be avoided, and you see Bursting Stone Quarry--into which there is no fear of falling if you keep your eyes open and note the time. By the watch you should be twenty minutes--a little more if you have hesitated or rested--from the top. Long before this the ordinary cloud-cap has been left aloft, and you see your way, even by moonlight, without the least difficulty towards the village; but though mist may settle down, from this quarry a distinct though disused road leads you safe home. In ten minutes from the quarry the road brings you to Booth Tarn, through some extremely picturesque broken ground, from which under an ordinary sunset the views of the nearer hills are fine, with grand foreground. Booth Crag itself stands over the tarn, probably named from a little bield or shelter in ruins in a nook beneath it; and where the quarry road comes out upon Banniside Moss, the Coniston limestone appears, easily recognisable with its pitted and curved bands, contrasting with the bulkier volcanic breccia just above. Beyond the tarn to the right are the volunteers' rifle-butts with their flagstaff. Take the path to the left, and in five minutes reach the gate of the intake, with lovely sunset and moonlight views of the Bell and the Scrow to the left, and Yewdale beyond; Red Screes and Ill Bell in the distance. Hence the road is plain, and twenty minutes more bring you past the Railway Station to Coniston village.