The signs all point towards a hill. There are quite a few of these here, outside Penrith in Cumbria, and it's not immediately clear why this one should be any different - until our car swings round a concealed bend and draws up beside a pair of heavy brown doors set into the hillside. They glide open in the manner of the top-secret lair of a movie villain bent on world domination.
As it happens, the ambitions of the newly-opened Rheged Discovery Centre, which lies behind the doors, don't quite run to world domination. This vast underground visitor attraction - the largest earth-covered building in England - has a more modest aim, but one that may prove equally tricky: to break the stranglehold on Cumbrian tourism of the honeypots of Windermere, Ambleside and Grasmere - the traditional Lake District haunts crammed with traffic jams and Beatrix Potter merchandise.
The strange, dark beauty of the cloud-shrouded crags and fells of northern Cumbria has had a bad press ever since Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins made a disastrous journey up Carrock Fell in 1871 (Dickens moaned about the views, while Collins sprained his ankle and sulked for the rest of the trip). The £15m Rheged complex is an unashamedly populist attempt to set things right.
It will find few friends among those devotees of the region who would be quite happy for it to remain neglected and unvisited. For everyone else, Rheged offers a "visitor experience" centred on a vast, Imax-sized cinema screen which slices through six of the building's seven levels, complemented by numerous themed exhibitions, shops and workshops selling local goods, an excellent restaurant with a menu by leading northern chef Paul Heathcote, a café and a bar.
Rheged is worth a visit for the architecture alone. Heated entirely by the surrounding earth, the building is lit by pillars of light from a series of atriums hidden in the grass above. The main large-screen film is rather less satisfying: a cheesy trawl through the region's Celtic mythology - something about a gipsy girl and an ancient king and a mysterious talisman, although I lost track of the plot long before half way.
Nevertheless, in providing a much-needed introduction to the northern crags and fells, Rheged has done the region a service - just as long as it doesn't prove too popular and threaten their appealing emptiness.
Either way, it is worth arranging a visit to northern Cumbria in haste. The town of Keswick serves as a good springboard to the two most alluring areas of rugged countryside - Skiddaw and Bassenthwaite Lake, and the fells beyond known locally as the Back o' Skiddaw.
Details Rheged Discovery Centre, Redhills, Penrith, Cumbria CA11 0DQ (tel 01768 868000, www.rheged.com) is open 10am-6pm daily, adults £4.95, children £3.50.
The picturesque market town that serves the northern fells' major population positively heaves with decent pubs and tea-rooms, and it's easy to spend a day here only emerging from one to visit another. But it really is also worth suppressing one's cynicism for a visit to the much-mocked Cumberland Pencil Museum (017687 73626).
The world's largest pencil may be strangely anticlimactic at only 6ft, but the story of the discovery and exploitation of graphite in these hills and the subsequent collapse of the industries built upon it is told with a verve rare in traditional museums. And you can buy all the pencils you'll ever need in the museum shop.
The Theatre by the Lake (017687 74411, www.theatrebythelake.com) is open year round seven days a week.
What to do: Walk, of course - preferably via the haunting Castlerigg Stone Circle (en route to the village of Threlkeld). The 38 massive stone slabs were probably once used to measure time but are now just incredibly spooky.
Where to stay: Fitz House, 47 Brundholme Terrace (01768 774488), an upmarket bed-and-breakfast in a Victorian townhouse; the Keswick Lodge Hotel on Main Street (017687 75484), an 18th-century coaching inn serving fine beer.
Where to eat: Rembrandt (017687 72008), a historic restaurant serving classic Cumbrian fare; Twa Dogs (017687 72599), a cosy pub named after a Robert Burns poem probably written on one of his Lakeland visits.
Further information: Keswick tourist information centre: 017687 72645.
Dominating the skyline, the slate ridges of Skiddaw constitute that pleasing thing: a real mountain, indisputably, at over 3,000ft - but one that is eminently climbable by amateurs in almost all weather conditions. A wide, straightforward "tourist route" starts from a carpark on Gale Road and winds east and north up to the High Man, the principal summit, though the views from the adjacent Little Man are significantly more breathtaking. There's also a diversion to Britain's most remote youth hostel Skiddaw House, (there's no phone, and the food is bring-your-own).
Bassenthwaite Lake - the only stretch of water in the area actually called a Lake, all the others being meres, waters or tarns - is a near-silent haven for a plethora of bird species. The earsplitting powerboats that blight Windermere and elsewhere are mercifully banned.
Where to stay: Skiddaw House (make arrangements via Carrock Fell Youth Yostel, 016974 78325); Link House at Dubwath on the shore of Bassenthwaite Lake, a pleasant Victorian B&B with all rooms ensuite (017687 76291).
Where to eat: Among numerous excellent but undiscovered pubs scattered across the area, two stand out: The Sun Inn at Bassenthwaite (017687 76439) and The Pheasant near Dubwath (017687 76234).
The windswept fells behind Skiddaw attract an alarmingly-committed breed of hiker, occasionally to be spotted marching through the streets of the area's delightful villages - chief among them Caldbeck, Mosedale, Mungrisdale and Hesket Newmarket - in pursuit of the next steep slope.
They may well be on their way to Carrock Fell, a brooding monster often shrouded in mist and best approached by a footpath from Mungrisdale. Once at the top, the more energetic can swing west to High Pike, its summit incongruously surmounted by a wrought-iron bench. This is lovingly catalogued on John Dawson's excellent website www.lakedistrict walks.com.
None of which should deter the weekend stroller in search of a four- or five-mile amble culminating in a pub serving good beer. Mungrisdale, again, is a great place to start for a walk of this scale, perhaps heading up the paths that wind around the base of Bowscale Fell and Bannerdale Crags. Returning walkers are met with the infinitely comforting sight of the Mill Inn (017687 79632), a 16th-century pub beside the Glenderamackin river whose charms were not lost even on the bad-tempered Dickens.
Where to stay: The excellent Mosedale House at Mosedale (017687 79371); Bank End Mill in Hesket Newmarket (016974 78398), a B&B in an 18th-century farmhouse.
Where to eat: The Old Crown at Hesket Newmarket (016974 78288) famed for its beers brewed on the premises, its curries, home-made puddings and welcome; The Oddfellows Arms at Caldbeck (016974 78227), a pub with a good bar and restaurant menu. The grave of John Peel is nearby in St Kentigern's churchyard.
