The Coledale Round

Back in September we spent a weekend in the village of Braithwaite near Keswick. Originally, Sam was going to be running an ultra marathon on the Saturday, but the event was postponed for reasons unknown. As our accommodation was non-refundable, we decided to just go over anyway for a weekend away and to hopefully bag more Wainwrights – in particular, the Wainwrights of the Coledale Round. Braithwaite is a bit infamous for being a nightmare to park in, so we took full advantage of being based here to get the surrounding fells ticked off rather than having to drive back across at a later date, when we wouldn’t have a reserved parking space. It was great to be able to walk from our door straight onto the fells!

We based our plan for the day on this route from WalkLakes, although we made a few changes to bag eight Wainwrights rather than the five on the original route: it was too good an opportunity to bag Wandope, Scar Crags and Causey Pike to miss. The forecast for the day was for a cloudy morning and a brighter afternoon, so we set off cheerfully into the light drizzle, confident it would dry up soon.

The drizzle did disappear not long after we started the climb up Grisedale Pike, something I was grateful for as it would have made a long steep slog even more miserable. About halfway up, we walked into the cloud, which didn’t disappear until we got to the summit of Sail – our fifth Wainwright of the day! So I can’t offer any comment on the quality of the views for most of the first half of the walk.

Happily, the climb up Grisedale Pike does get a lot of the day’s ascent out of the way, with just a few shorter climbs to get to each individual summit. After a straightforward walk over to Hopegill Head (during which the drizzle returned as fully fledged light rain), we detoured slightly away from the WalkLakes route to bag Wandope – the first part of the day where the path turned grassy rather than stony. The cloud lifted for about 0.5 seconds at the top to give us a peek at what the view would normally be like – a nice look down over Knott Rigg and Ard Crags, with Robinson in the background.

From Wandope, it was a fairly quick climb up to the summit of Crag Hill, with again absolutely no views. We did start to see more people at this point, presumably others like us trying to cram in a good number of Wainwrights before the winter weather sets in and longer days on the fells become significantly less appealing. It’s not far from Crag Hill to Sail, Wainwright number five: the two are joined by a fairly broad ridge which doesn’t take long to walk across. It is a long way down on either side and you do need to take care where you’re putting your feet in places, but it wasn’t anything that made me feel worried, even with my discomfort with heights.

The cloud finally started to lift as we made our way down from Sail via its infamous zig zagging path (which takes less time to walk down than you’d expect, although I’d rather be going down it than up it!). At the bottom of the zig zag path is a junction, where the majority of the other walkers were turning left (which is also the way the WalkLakes route goes). Instead of turning off here though we carried on straight ahead to climb up to Scar Crags, Wainwright number six. From here it’s an easy amble along another broad ridge to reach Causey Pike – while it made our walk longer, it’s a lot easier to bag them as part of this route than to start from the bottom and climb up the nose of Causey Pike.

We doubled back a short way from the summit of Causey Pike to pick up a narrow trail running diagonally down the hill side – it started off boggy but dried up pretty quickly. This path deposited us on the main track running along the bottom, which rather than turning onto we crossed, to start up a narrow trail through the heather on the slopes of Outerside.

By this point, my energy levels were waning and the climb up to the top of Outerside made my legs burn disproportionately compared to the long slog up Grisedale Pike at the start of the day. It was quite satisfying to look around from the summit though, as we’d climbed pretty much every hill in sight! If you wanted to add another Wainwright into your route, you could easily walk across to Barrow on your way back, but as we’d already bagged this one we started to drop back down to Braithwaite, back on our original WalkLakes route.

The descent was gradual for the most part, and it was nice to avoid the jelly legs that usually set in by the end of the day. Overall this route took us about seven hours from start to finish, and we bagged a satisfying number of Wainwrights for actually not that much effort. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a long day out, but I found this less taxing than both the Newlands Round and the Mosedale Horseshoe which both bag fewer Wainwrights – although on both of these walks it was hot and sunny, which always makes it sweatier and harder going!

Dog friendly rating – 3/5. Like most Lake District fell walks, you should expect to come across sheep at any time, and beyond a few puddles there wasn’t much water for the dogs. Neither of our dogs had any issues with the terrain, although the steep drops in places meant that we kept them safely on the lead anyway. There were no stiles or other dog obstacles to worry about either on this walk – although I think Coal has finally cracked them, aged four!

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