Hampstead Circular Walk, Fenton House

This gentle circular route through Hampstead links some of the village's most celebrated literary and cultural landmarks with the open expanses of Hampstead Heath. Setting off near Fenton House, the walk passes The Flask, a long-standing Hampstead pub, before threading between blue-plaqued homes associated with figures such as statistician Karl Pearson, composer Arthur Bliss, poet John Keats, writer George Orwell and the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore.

From the streets of the village the route drops onto the Heath itself, skirting Hampstead No. 1 Pond and crossing the ornamental Viaduct Bridge over its wooded pool. A memorial to the great Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott provides another point of pause before the path loops back through the Heath's mix of grassland, oak woodland and quiet ponds.

Nearby you can easily extend the outing to take in Parliament Hill for its famous London skyline view, the Bell Barrow on Hampstead Heath, or curiosities such as the Tramwaymen's Bus Shelter and the plaques to actor Alastair Sim and historians J. L. and Barbara Hammond.