Taking then a survey of the ground of choice, we have to decide whether the crag in question is situated at the first division or main split of the road from Ambleside furthest from Hawkshead, or whether at the place where the two roads converge again into one nearer Hawkshead.

Whether, that is, the crag above the Pullwyke quarry, at the junction of the road to Water Barngates and the road to Wray and Outgate is to be selected, about two miles from Hawkshead; or whether we are to fix on the spot you have chosen, at the point about a mile north-east of Hawkshead, ‘called in the ordnance map Outgate.’

  Of the two I incline to the former, for these reasons.  The boys could
  not be so certain of ‘not missing the ponies’, at any other place than
  here at Pullwyke.

The crag exactly answers the poet’s description, a rising ground, the meeting-place of two highways.  For in the poet’s time the old Hawkshead and Outgate road at the Pullwyke corner ran at the very foot of the rising ground (roughly speaking) parallel to and some 60 to 100 yards west of the present road from the Pull to Wray.

  It is true that no trace of wall is visible at its summit, but the
  summit has been planted since with trees, and walls are often removed
  at time of planting.

The poet would have a full view of the main road, down to, and round, the Pullwyke Bay; he would see the branch road from the fork, as it mounted the Water Barngates Hill, to the west, and would see the other road of the fork far-stretched and going south.

He would also have an extended view of copse and meadow land.  He might, if the wind were south-easterly, hear the noise of Windermere, sobbing in the Pullwyke Bay, and would without doubt hear also the roar of the Pull Beck water, as it passed down from the Ironkeld slopes on his left towards the lake.

It might be objected that the poem gives us the idea of a crag which, from the Hawkshead side at any rate, would require to be of more difficult ascent than this is, to justify the idea of difficulty as suggested in the lines: 

                ’thither I repaired,
    Scout-like, and gained the summit;’

but I do not think we need read more into the lines than that the boy felt—­as he scanned the country with his eyes, on the ‘qui vive’ at every rise in the ground—­the feelings of a scout, who questions constantly the distant prospect.

  And certainly the Pullwyke quarry crag rises most steeply from the
  meeting-point of the two highways.

Next as to the Outgate crag, which you have chosen.  I am out of love with it.  First, if the lads wanted to make sure of the ponies, they would not have ascended it, but would have stayed just at the Hawkshead side of Outgate, or at the village itself, at the point of convergence of the ways.

  Secondly, the crag can hardly be described as rising from the
  meeting-point of two highways; only one highway passes near it.