Mike Priestley waves his titfer goodbye on the shores of the Lake District's crown jewel

It was an unpromising start to a walk. There we were, standing beside the lake as I took a map out of my backpack, when a gust of wind tugged my beloved straw hat off my head and sent it bowling down the shallow shingle beach.

I loped after it without urgency, believing that it would stop before it reached the water. It didn't. It kept on bowling until it hit the lapping waves. By the time I arrived at the water's edge it had floated beyond my reach. I ran back for my walking stick, but when I returned to the shore it was being carried off across the bay like a whicker yacht.

A middle-aged Japanese couple watched from the footpath and their daughter, aged maybe 19 or 20, came running down to the edge of the lake and started to take off her shoes. Bless her! She was intending to wade out and rescue my hat.

I couldn't let her, though. She'd have got soaked. Besides, it was now too far out. I thanked her profusely for her offer and waved goodbye to the hat, now sinking slowly and baffling the local ducks which were circling it curiously.

With the sun rapidly warming the Lakeland air and no hat to protect the Priestley pate, I was glad that the backpack contained a bottle of sunscreen. I slapped lots of it on and the walk began.

We had ventured a bit further afield than usual for this outing - to Ullswater, one of the loveliest of the lakes, two hours' drive away from Bradford via Penrith. The trip had begun with a sprint. We called at the jetty near Pooley Bridge, at the northern end of the lake, to check the times of the ferries to Howtown where we planned to start the walk.

The first ferry was scheduled to set off at 10am from Glenridding, at the southern end of the lake. And it was already twentyfive to. We drove along the winding road as speedily as was safely possible and arrived at the main Glennridding car park at five minutes to.

The ferry was 150 yards away. It wasn't until we had sprinted around the corner and were racing down the road towards the jetty that we realised that there was another car park right alongside it.

The ferry operators saw us coming and held the boat for us. We recovered our breath on the pleasant 30-minute cruise back up the lake to Howtown, on the eastern shore. And after the hat disaster the walk began and, mercifully, was incident-free.

This has to be one of the finest lowland walks in all of the Lake District, on a good path following the eastern rim of Ullswater with glorious views to the north, west and south. Sometimes the path rose away from the water. Sometimes it wound its way through ancient woodland. On the far shore the fells rose high, with Helvellyn dominating the middle distance.

As we walked, the ferry kept navigating its way up and down the lake, carrying more passengers mainly from Glenridding to Howtown, which is a popular starting point for a variety of walks. The number of cars using the distant lakeside road increased steadily as the morning wore on. The sun glinted on their roofs across the water. On the side we were on, it lit up high rock faces adorned with heather.

Eventually we swung due south, heading into the entrance to Patterdale which carries the road over the Kirkstone Pass to Windermere, before turning right through a farm selling ice-creams and teas to cross Goldrill Beck and return to the road which would soon see us back to Glenridding.

The sky was changing now, with the cloud building. As we sat outside the Traveller's Rest pub on the dead-end road leading up into the fells from Glenridding, enjoying a late lunch, the cloud sweeping down from Helvellyn began to drop a fine but not unpleasant drizzle on us, cooling the top of my hatless head which was glowing despite the lavish application of sunscreen.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.