Ten spectacular mountain walks for ordinary fitness levels

The best mountain views are supposedly earned with ropes, crampons and 4am starts. Nonsense. Some of Europe's most jaw-dropping trails ask for nothing more than decent shoes, water and a reasonable pair of lungs. The ten walks below all fit inside a day, need no technical skill and finish somewhere your camera will thank you for. If you can manage three hours on your feet with breaks, every one of these is yours.

Three colossal limestone towers, one ten-kilometre circuit, zero technical difficulty — the Tre Cime loop is the Dolomites' greatest hits in about four hours. Start from the Auronzo hut (drive or bus up), walk anticlockwise and let the towers rotate through every profile. Refuges en route serve strudel at strategic weakness points. Go early or late in the day; the light is the show.

A gondola from Kandersteg removes most of the climbing, leaving a gentle twenty-minute stroll to one of the Alps' most improbable sights: a turquoise lake cupped by two-thousand-metre rock walls. Continue along the panorama trail above the water for the full amphitheatre effect, then row a wooden boat or ride the summer toboggan run back down. Effort-to-reward ratio: unbeatable.

The cable car from Ortisei does the work; you just walk the sky. Seceda's ridge drops away in a wave of jagged teeth — the most photographed line in the Dolomites — and the path along the top is broad, grassy and mercifully flat. Wander as far as the Pieralongia rocks, picnic among belled cows, descend by lift. It's the biggest scenery-per-step return in the Alps.

Carved into the wall of a kilometre-deep canyon, the Cares path runs twelve kilometres between Poncebos and Caín through tunnels and along ledges — dramatic to look at, flat and easy to walk. Turn around wherever suits your legs; the scenery peaks in the middle third. Mountain goats supervise. Spring and autumn beat the fierce summer heat of northern Spain's surprising wild corner.

The highest peak in Wales has a walkers' route up its northern ridge that asks only patience: nine miles return on a clear, steady path with the railway for moral support alongside. On a clean day the summit sees Ireland; on a normal day, the inside of a cloud with occasional revelations. Start by 8am to beat the queue, and earn the best chip-shop dinner of your life back in Llanberis.

A mountain in miniature: Ben A'an is barely 454 metres, climbed in about an hour, yet its rocky little summit delivers a full Highland panorama over Loch Katrine that mountains three times its size would envy. It's the perfect first 'peak' for children or the chronically deskbound. Combine with a steamship cruise on the loch below and you've had a complete Scottish day.

Poland's most beloved mountain lake sits in a granite bowl beneath the Tatras' highest walls, reached by a wide, paved forest road — nine kilometres of gentle gradient that horse-carts also ply. The reveal at the top, peaks doubling themselves in still water, explains the national devotion. Continue twenty minutes to the higher Czarny Staw lake to lose most of the crowd instantly.

Ride the Flégère lift out of Chamonix and a two-hour balcony path delivers you to Lac Blanc, the tarn whose still water doubles the entire Mont Blanc massif — one of the Alps' great mirror shots. The trail is rocky in places but never technical, and the little refuge at the top sells omelettes and views in equal measure. Go from late June once the snow has cleared, and start early; by noon the reflection is fringed with tripods.

Pulpit Rock is a flat granite stage hanging 604 metres above the Lysefjord, and the walk to it is a well-built eight-kilometre round trip of stone staircases and boardwalk — steep in bursts, entirely manageable in trainers with tread. The final ledge has no barriers because Norway trusts you; sit down and shuffle if the drop disagrees with your knees. Leave the Preikestolen lodge car park by 7am in July, or come in September when the coach crowds thin dramatically.

Skye's most famous pinnacle is a fifty-metre finger of basalt leaning out of a landslip amphitheatre, and the path up from the Storr car park takes barely ninety minutes return. The higher you climb, the stranger it gets — spires, hollows and the Sound of Raasay glittering below. Dawn is the classic move: sunrise light on the rock, an empty car park and the whole eerie place to yourself before the tour buses roll up from Portree.