I’ve said before that walking the Wainwrights is a great way to prompt yourself to explore fells which otherwise might not make it onto your radar: Low Fell and Fellbarrow, for example, make for a cracking walk but I’d never heard of them until we perused our list of outstanding summits. This was again the case with Barrow, a small fell above the village of Braithwaite, sometimes tackled as part of the Coledale Round and sometimes as a short easy walk on its own.
While I love a longer walk (within reason) which bags multiple Wainwrights, on the day that we climbed Barrow, it was touch and go as to whether we’d get up a fell at all. The forecast, while not horrendous, was not what I’d describe as ‘pleasant’: windy, showery and with low cloud. I don’t mind bad weather but I’d rather enjoy the walk and stick to low level trails if it’s horrible! In the end we decided that the walk up Barrow was short enough that we’d just go for it, and if it did rain more than expected, we’d be back quickly enough that getting a bit wet didn’t really matter.
Most routes up Barrow will send you around the rest of the Coledale fells: we followed this three mile circular route from the OS maps app, although we followed it in the opposite direction to the route author. Parking in Braithwaite can be tricky with rather limited roadside parking options. Happily we were staying in a cottage in the village, which meant that we could set out straight from our front door without having to worry about finding a space.
The route is pretty straight forward, with either a clear track or a very obvious direction to walk in along a grassy path. The ascent was surprisingly not that steep, with just a few rocky uneven sections as we approached the summit. We didn’t hang around at the top as the wind was pretty strong up there! Coming down was steeper, but not enough to have to mince your way down carefully to avoid falling flat on your face. All in all we were out for around two hours: back in time to thaw out with a hot lunch at the cottage!
Barrow is a good option if you want an easier fell to build your confidence, or if the cloud is lingering close to the tops: most of the surrounding fells disappeared into a blanket of fog, but Barrow is small enough that we had views all the way up and down. Of course, you can’t have views for them all, but it does make the walk a lot more enjoyable!
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. To be honest, it’s very unlikely I’ll ever give a Lake District fell walk a rating any higher than this: I really don’t want to be responsible for anyone being lax with leads and recall and having an incident with sheep! While we didn’t see any sheep, and we did see lots of local dog walkers on the lower slopes of the fell with their dogs off lead, you should always expect a sheep to pop up at any time in the Lake District fells. We did see sheep on the Coledale Round the following day, and there’s absolutely nothing to stop them wandering across to Barrow from here. We didn’t, however, encounter any stiles, so you don’t have to worry about lifting your dog over any awkward fences. There are also dog poo bins at the bottom of the path up the fell which was a very welcome change to the norm!
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