The Lake District isn’t too bad on a bank holiday, if you know where to go. Popular spots like Cat Bells, Grasmere and Ambleside are to be avoided at all costs, but heading up a hill thins the crowds significantly, and if you pick an obscure fell it’ll almost be like going for a walk on any other day. Good options are routes like Carrock Fell & High Pike or dragging yourself the rather long way up Haycock: these fells aren’t as celebrated as others and therefore they are usually much quieter. You’ll definitely see some Wainwright baggers though!
On Good Friday this year we were in the Western Lakes, which (some popular hills like Great Gable aside) have a few good bank holiday spots. This time we opted to follow a route from the OS Maps app bagging three new Wainwrights: Gavel Fell, Blake Fell and Burnbank Fell.
I won’t share the route we used as I wouldn’t recommend it – a lot of it took a ‘direct route’ approach, including a mile of so of battling our way through a pathless, forested, vertical incline, which was especially hard going. I do however think that you would be able to find other similar routes using better paths!
We started our walk from the Lake District national park car park in Lamplugh, which is a donations car park. From here, we walked across to Cogra Moss, a Forestry reservoir which is very pretty and which can be walked as a circular itself. It has lots of woodland paths and is livestock free, so it would be a great option for a dog walk. With Wainwrights to bag though we soon left the reservoir paths and started our horrendously steep hike up through the woods, clambering over boulders, ducking under branches and often sliding back several steps thanks to the the slimy moss underfoot. Not fun! I think we passed a path earlier on which in hindsight probably would have brought us to the same place with a lot less hassle.
My intense relief at getting out of the woods was short lived, as the way up continued to be pathless and horribly steep. Feeling rather unenthusiastic about the walk at this stage, I carried on putting one foot in front of the other (Sam meanwhile was skipping up the hill, mountain goat that he is) before it eventually (mercifully) flattened out at the top. From here, it was an out and back to the summit of Gavel Fell, a little boggy in places but thankfully nowhere near as steep as the first climb.
From Gavel Fell it’s not too far to the summit of Blake Fell, with some nice views of the surrounding Lakes on the way. The walk across to Burnbank is mostly downhill and boggy in quite a few places. I can’t comment on the views as on our way across we ended up walking into a cloud, so we didn’t hang around and instead backtracked from the summit to begin our descent back to Cogra Moss.
The descent was steep-ish to start with but soon picks up one of the woodland tracks at Cogra Moss, levelling out and becoming very well surfaced. We followed this all the way down to walk back along the opposite side of the reservoir to the one we’d walked out on – make sure to look back at the fells you’ve just climbed for some lovely views.
Dog friendly rating – 3.5/5. The Cogra Moss sections are perfect for dogs being livestock free, and the reservoir seems popular with local dog walkers. Up on the fells there is little water and you may come across livestock, and there is the odd stile to navigate (but all of the ones we came across did have a dog gate which was very handy).
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