---
title: "Friars Crag | Visit Keswick, Lake District"
url: https://visitkeswick.com/explore/not-to-miss/friars-crag
description: "The short walk from town to the most-painted view in Keswick, and the memorial to the writer who never forgot seeing it at five years old."
---

## Getting there

Friars Crag [(what3words: became.hopes.signs)](https://what3words.com/became.hopes.signs) , in the northern Lake District, is a short walk from the town centre and well worth it: the view over Derwentwater to the jaws of Borrowdale is remarkable.

From the Market Square, stroll down Lake Road, through the gardens of Hope Park, and follow the shoreline past the boat landings on Derwentwater. You arrive at the viewpoint very shortly after.

The standing stone of the Ruskin memorial in a railed clearing among tall pines

## The Ruskin memorial

Just back from the crag stands a monument put up in 1900, in recognition of the writer and artist John Ruskin’s first visit to Keswick in 1824. He was five years old at the time, and the view clearly stayed with him.

## What Ruskin said about it

“The first thing I remember as an event in life was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friars Crag on Derwentwater.”

John Ruskin

Carved on the memorial, of his first visit in 1824

Quote 1 of 3

A bench under overhanging pines looking down the length of Derwentwater

## And it has not changed

Fortunately for the rest of us the view has held up. The highly complimentary things Ruskin said about it in the middle of the nineteenth century are as true now as they were then.

The walk back can be extended along the shore, or cut short through Hope Park — either way it is under an hour from the Moot Hall and back.

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- Friars Crag
- [Keswick](https://visitkeswick.com/explore/town)
- [Castlehead](https://visitkeswick.com/explore/not-to-miss/castlehead)
- [Derwentwater](https://visitkeswick.com/explore/lakes/derwentwater)

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