The next arrivals in Eskdale were the Romans. In AD79, General Agricola built the first of four forts at Ravenglass as a prelude to the control of the fearsome Brigantes who occupied most of northern England. Although only the grassy embankments of the fort remain today, half of the outer bath house, known as Walls Castle, still stands.

Eskdale's better known fort, Hardknott, was built some 40 years later as Emperor Hadrian consolidated defences against the marauding Scots. A great deal of the fort's walls, and the foundations of the inner buildings, survive today. Its situation, perched eyrie-like with dark crags above and below, lend an atmosphere that few ruins can match. Perhaps the most surprising fact is that the Romans stayed in Eskdale until AD410, some 350 years! Bronze Age stone circles and the lost City of Barnscar; Roman forts and Walls Castle; and the finest of Viking crosses.

Hadrian's Roman Lake District Tours organise tours- visit there website at www.carvetii.com

The most influential settlers, though, were the Norsemen in the 9th and 10th centuries. These were not the loot and pillage Vikings who swept the east coast but farmers who recognised the landscape from their homeland. It was they who created the fields and pastures that we see today. Many of the thick walls at Boot and Brotherilkeld are a result of their land clearance. Their language is also still very much alive in many of Eskdale's names, like Blea Tarn, Scafell, Birkerthwaite, Scale Gill and Dalegarth. Like the Angles, these Norse settlers left a number of carved stone crosses and tombstones. The finest Viking cross in Britain stands at Gosforth Church, its four sides combining Christian themes with pagan mythology. The famous Warrior Tomb, also at Gosforth, is said to depict the humiliating defeat of King Ethelred's army of 10,000 soldiers, at the top of Hardknott Pass, in AD1000. Unfortunately there is insufficient space to cover the following thousand years, but, hopefully, this early history will lend a different perspective to the landscape that you see today. Some of it might be shrouded by legend, but, with a little imagination, much of it still seems alive today.

Eskdale has four churches which embody the rich legacy of the valley's past. Whether this heritage lies within the ancient foundations of the modest church of St. Catherine's, set on the very brink of the River Esk, or rises as proudly as St Paul's magnificent Celtic cross, each of them reads as an open history book. ST CATHERINE'S CHURCH, close to Boot village, was thought to have been founded around 1125 by William Le Meschines of Egremont Castle who also founded Calder Abbey. The church was restored in 1881 but few records exist of the extent of the rebuilding work. The font, with its distinctive St Catherine's Wheel and pagan marigold motifs, and the East Window date from the 14th century, while one of the bells, the treble, was originally cast in 1445.

St Catherine's is also a good starting point for several walks beside the Esk - the finest being a 'figure of eight', including Doctor, Girder and Trough House bridges.

ST JOHN'S CHURCH, Waberthwaite, is a similarly quiet and humble church. Placed at the very mouth of the estuary, overlooked by Muncaster Castle, it sits on a sand spit that has been a fording point since Roman times. The present church dates from the 12th century but the Norse cross shaft, in the churchyard suggests much earlier use. The shaft has elaborately carved patterns of interlacing knots with the image of Odin's horse battling through this maze. A smaller cross shaft, from around 890 AD was rescued from the threshold of the porch and has been relocated in its original socket.

Often overlooked is the early Norman font part hidden by the corner of a box pew near the door. St John's is an elemental church with few creature comforts but in its simplicity and isolation it has an honest, paired-down sense of worship.

ST PAUL'S CHURCH, Irton, with its grand backdrop of the western fells, is as far removed in character from St John's as is imaginable. Here the mid-Victorian tower looms disproportionately large out of the flat farmland and says more about the funders - the Brocklebanks and Lutwidges of Whitehaven - than the farmers' needs. It does however have two quite dissimilar attractions - a beautiful set of Burne-Jones windows and the magnificent Irton Cross. This ten foot high Celtic cross has stood firm against westerly gales for 1200 years - its decorative scrollwork still remarkably clear today.

ST MICHAEL'S CHURCH, Muncaster, was appropriated to Conishead Priory by the Pennington family during the reign of Henry II and much of the nave is thought to date from the 12th century. The church's East Window is Early Perpendicular while the North Window is one of the few 'doom' windows in Britain. In the churchyard is a Norse cross, with characteristic chain cabling, dating from 950 AD and with a cross head recovered from a garden wall in Irton. The church is bordered by Muncaster Castle's broad terrace garden and the views up the valley, as described by Ruskin, are simply breathtaking.

And so to ST BEGA'S CHURCH in Eskdale Green, a mere hundred year acorn to these mighty historical oaks, but creating a new heritage of harvest festivals, christingles and baptisms. It is here that the Farne Ensemble sets Mozart's melodies to the evening light chasing across Garner Bank and swallows sweep in between the rafters.

Legend has it that when St Bega first came to the west coast, from Ireland, she tempered pagan doubt with the promise of a miracle - that there would be snow on Midsummer's Day. The weather duly obliged; St Bega was relegated to being patron saint of bees; and, of course, it has snowed quite unpredictably ever since.