Wastwater has a rugged forbidding beauty that imbues the spirit with the same kind of awe as a great cathedral - massive screes plunging directly into the darkness of England's deepest lake. Scafell the country’s highest mountain and the popular Great Gable also abut the head of the valley gouged out by glaciation containing one of the land’s smallest churches.
	Wasdale is famous for the original World’s Greatest Liar, Will Ritson, and the annual competition of tall tales. It is also home for one of the world’s greatest runners, Jos Naylor, who could hand shear a flock of sheep and then compete in a fell race across a dozen peaks and no doubt be back in time to fix a wall gap before bed.
	Sheep farming in the valley dates back to at least the time of Norse settlers around the 10th century but the system of counting sheep appears to have Celtic roots suggesting an even an earlier date.