Mountains & Fells

It’s called the Lake District for a reason, but sharing top billing with its bodies of water are its mountains and fells – with fell being another word to describe a mountain (or a very big hill). And here the hills are pretty big – England’s 10 tallest mountains are all in the Lake District, with Scafell Pike (3209 feet/978m) the tallest of them all.

The views from the summits of virtually all of Cumbria’s mountains are pretty spectacular, but you have to get up to the top of them first – which is the main part of their attraction. Fell walking (or running, if you’re so inclined) is one of the main reasons so many people come to Cumbria and the Lake District, as here you’ll find a broad mixture of challenges: from gentle strolls up a grassy hill to clambering carefully along razor edged ridges with vertiginous drops on either side.

And because fell walking is so popular, the region knows how to cater to walkers – virtually every town and most villages have outdoor equipment shops, while most bookshops and tourist offices are well-stocked with walking guides, including of course Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, the fell walker’s bible.

Wainwright's Lake District Walks

The Lake District’s most famous fell-walker was Alfred Wainwright, the accountant-turned-writer whose seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966, remains the guide of choice for most fell-walkers. In it Wainwright painstakingly documents 214 ‘official’ peaks, meaning any mountain over 1000 feet (304m) – the only exception being Castle Crag, which comes in a tad shorter at 950 feet (300m).
 
For each fell, Wainwright includes the preferred routes to the summit, carefully detailing each step with his own idiosyncratic descriptions and hand-drawn maps. The guide has been updated twice since it was first published (mostly to take account of the changing conditions of the fells), but it remains pretty much as Wainwright himself wrote it. More than a half-century later, the guide remains a detailed love letter for the Lake District, its careful notations a marvel of precise observation.
 
To summit all 214 fells is considered the ultimate feat of peak bagging in the Lake District – if you fancy taking it on, consider that the current record for climbing them all is six days, six hours and four minutes, set in 2019 by Irish fell runner Paul Tierney – that’s 320 miles (515km) and 118,000 feet (36,000m) of ascent.
 
For most everyone else, though, the real pleasure of the Wainwrights is in just doing them. One of the easiest of all is Catbells, a gentle, 451m amble that almost anyone can do – whether you’re seven or 70. Haystacks (597m), at the southeastern end of Buttermere, was Wainwright’s favourite, and while he didn’t include in his “best half-dozen” at the end of guide, he wrote that "for beauty, variety and interesting detail, for sheer fascination and unique individuality, the summit area of Haystacks is supreme. This is in fact the best fell-top of all" He liked it so much that his ashes were scattered here after his death in 1991.
 
A much tougher climb is Helvellyn (950m), whose narrow Striding Edge is a challenge for even experienced walkers, while the views from Blencathra (868m) over Keswick and the northern fells is unparalleled. And then there’s Scafell Pike, at 978m England’s tallest mountain. The classic route to the summit starts at Wasdale Head, but the ever-enthusiastic Wainwright described five different paths to the top. Take your pick, and then do it again.

If all this has whet your appetite to get out there and try a few of Wainwrights walks, then have a look at our Wainwright podcasts page, where you can download free podcasts of eight of the most famous walks Wainwright documented.