Castlerigg Stone Circle sits on a plateau above Keswick, and it's hard to imagine a more spectacular setting for confusion. Thirty-eight stones, hauled here by Neolithic farmers some 4,500 years ago, form a circle whose purpose nobody has settled: a trading post, a religious site, or an early attempt at astronomy.

What is certain is the view, a full 360-degree sweep across Helvellyn, Skiddaw and Blencathra. Victorian visitors so admired the place that they took pieces home as souvenirs, chipping stones older than the pyramids. The outcry helped make Castlerigg one of Britain's earliest scheduled monuments in 1882, and it later passed to the National Trust, which lets visitors wander freely among the stones for nothing.

VoiceMap's Lake District driving tour pauses here between Keswick and Ullswater, treating the circle as a curious full stop on a route otherwise devoted to Wordsworth and his fellow Romantics.