Day tripping to the Lakes to bag more Wainwrights has taken a back seat over the last year or so. We’ve reached the point now where we’ve bagged a lot of the peaks which are suitable for day trips, with many of the remaining fells being either big walks or with very limited parking – and I’m not a fan of getting up at 4am to get there early enough to get a space. We’ve therefore booked a few trips for this year to get over there for an extended stay, allowing us to do some longer walks or climb the Wainwrights in harder to reach from home areas.
First up was a whole week in Keswick at the start of June. I had grand plans of bagging 20+ Wainwrights over the course of the week, but unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. The weather started off middling to bad, improved for one day, and then went downhill from there. We did however make the best of it that we could, using the first half of the week to get into the hills and sticking to lower level walks for the rest of the trip.
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Great Crag and Grange Fell
Day 1, Saturday, was initially forecast to be decent weather wise. As we got closer and closer to the trip, the weather deteriorated into heavy rain all morning with a drier spell in the afternoon. Full of enthusiasm and not to be deterred, we opted for a steady morning in our (very nice) accommodation (details to come in next week’s blog), heading out in the afternoon to climb Great Crag and Grange Fell.
Two of the smaller Wainwrights, we’d originally planned to follow a 5.5 mile walk from our Graham Uney guide to walking the Wainwrights. However, with our dry window shrinking by the hour, we tinkered with the route a little to start from Watendlath instead of Rosthwaite. The rationale for this was that it shaved off a few miles (reducing the amount of time we’d need to get around), and that the car park at Watendlath is about twice the size of the one in Rosthwaite. There’s a similar route on AllTrails.
Surprisingly, when we arrived in Watendlath just after lunchtime on the Saturday, the car park was nearly empty. What a novelty in the Lake District! Although I will concede that it was potentially the weather keeping people away. The car park is a National Trust pay & display with a toilet block, and having smugly scanned our National Trust card for free parking we set off on our way.
Our first objective was Great Crag. The path climbs fairly steadily and is pretty easy as hill walks go, steepening only briefly close to the very top. On the flip side, it was rather wet underfoot: possibly due to the amount of rain we’d had in the run up to doing this walk, but the Central Fells are notoriously boggy and I suspect this route will be mildly wet as a minimum all year round. There was at least a laid path to follow – for now…
During the ascent the views weren’t anything to write home about compared to other walks in the Lakes (but still nice enough surroundings). At the top the view was very nice, but we didn’t hang around for long as after a rather still and humid climb, the wind really picked up when we didn’t have the hill in front of us to shelter us. So, after snapping a few quick photos, it was onto Wainwright number two of the day: Grange Fell.
Grange Fell has three summits: Brund Fell, King’s How and Ether Knott. Ether Knott is the highest point of the fell but Brund Fell is the Wainwright summit – similar to Armboth Fell in that the Wainwright isn’t necessarily the highest point. I was also kicking myself when I realised that King’s How was so close to a Wainwright – bagging another Wainwright would’ve made our miserable walk up it a few years ago slightly less traumatic!
The walk across to Grange Fell from Great Crag was straightforward enough, mostly flat with one sharper pull at the end. We did start to see more people once we’d made it to this point of the walk – perhaps tempted out by the break in the weather. The views were, in my opinion, better on this second half of the walk, but again we didn’t hang around for long at the summit with the sharp wind chasing us down.
Descending back into Watendlath is steady going, without any horribly steep sections. While the walk won’t be featuring on my list of favourite Wainwright routes (not that I didn’t enjoy the walk, just that I didn’t get any ‘wow’ moments), they are now at least bagged and we made it around with dry feet, so I’m taking it as a win.
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. We didn’t see any livestock on this walk, but as with any Lakeland walk you should expect to see sheep anywhere on the fells. There’s a ladder stile which needs to be crossed (twice) on the out and back section up Grange Fell, but other than this the route is stile free. At the start and end there’s a chance for dogs to have a paddle in Watendlath Tarn.
Lingmoor Fell
Sunday was similar to Saturday, with heavy rain in the morning eventually giving way to a few dry hours in the afternoon. Perusing my Wainwrights app for a smaller fell which is usually tackled on its own (the numbers of which are dwindling), we set off at lunchtime for Langdale to bag Lingmoor Fell. Another route from our Graham Uney guide, it’s similar to this route from WalkLakes, although it omits the additional climb up Side Pike.
Driving over to Langdale in the pouring rain, I was seriously questioning our decision. The plus side was that there was plenty of parking available in Langdale when we arrived, including in our first choice car park: the National Trust pay & display at the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. Sprinting to the machine to get a ticket and back to the car to shelter from the downpour, we gave it 15 minutes for the rain to ease up: which, miraculously, it did.
Setting out on our 4 mile route, the scenery was immediately lovely, even with the lingering clouds. The walk follows the path leading to Blea Tarn from Langdale, heading uphill to join a road for a stretch, passing above Blea Tarn to then branch off up a steeply climbing path. While steep it was over pretty quickly, easing off to follow a rocky trail leading up to the summit. There were a few short scrambly sections up here, but nothing scary and actually the kind of path I find quite fun! Make sure to look back along here if you do this walk as there are some cracking views.
There are lovely views at the summit, and all the way back down to the road – this really is one of my favourite parts of the Lake District. Surprisingly we only saw two other hikers once we diverged from the Blea Tarn path, as that’s where most people seemed to be heading. Personally I’d say this is a better walk than Blea Tarn (not having done Blea Tarn, so not really a fair comparison), but the views are excellent and it’s a fairly unknown fell: everyone round here is either heading up the Langdale Pikes or to Blea Tarn. Only Wainwright baggers seem to head up here, but it’s a really cracking little fell which can be hiked in a few hours: a rare Lake District hidden gem.
Dog friendly rating: 3.5/5. There were sheep grazing in the earlier fields we passed, but no sight of any once we were on the slopes of Lingmoor Fell: however, up here there are some steep drops in places. Dogs should be able to manage the rocky sections without any trouble. We crossed a few stiles on this route but they all had dog gates to the side to enable dogs to pass without issues.
The Greenburn Round
Monday was set to be the best day of the week weather-wise, and so we set off early to complete the Kentmere Round, which would net us 7 new Wainwrights. Unfortunately we weren’t quite early enough, arriving in Kentmere to find our parking luck had run out, and needing to revert to our Plan B. We always have a Plan B (and sometimes a Plan C and D) when we’re in the Lakes, so we turned around and drove back to Grasmere, where there’s plenty of parking and we thought we’d be OK turning up a bit later.
There’s usually space at a reasonable time in the morning at the pay & display in Grasmere, because it’s fairly pricey and there’s free parking options along the road just outside of the village. I don’t mind paying for parking though as I know it contributes towards the upkeep of the national park, and it’s still much cheaper than say going out for tea or going to the cinema.
This was another route from our Graham Uney guide, which does have a few reasonable length walks: they’re not all monstrously long walks like the one we did last year up Haycock. The 9 mile circular we followed was similar to this route on WalkLakes.
There’s quite a bit of road walking at the start, but we always like to get this out of the way at the beginning, and it’s a very quiet road – we didn’t see any cars once we got away from Grasmere, but we did see a red squirrel on a feeder by the side of the road. Lovely!
Eventually we left the road to start the climb up our first Wainwright, Steel Fell. The path is grassy but clear and the gradient was steady enough to deceive me into thinking we’d be at the top in no time – this was rapidly dispelled by not one but by two false summits. After the first false summit, it turned into a trudge which felt like it took ages, but I think perhaps I was just grumpy with tired legs – I cheered up significantly once we got to the top.
I can’t say Steel Fell is the most exciting Wainwright I’ve ever summitted, but what I can say with confidence is that the views got progressively better as we made our way around the walk. I was convinced I could see our next goal, Calf Crag, from the summit of Steel Fell (it turned out it was just a random craggy knoll), but we did eventually get there, via an unexpectedly boggy but reasonably flat march across from Steel Fell.
It was from this point that I really started to enjoy the views, with some classically lovely Lakeland views as we walked along the ridge from Calf Crag to the next two Wainwrights. Gibson Knott is a fun rocky knoll halfway along the ridge, which has great views down over the Greenburn Valley and across to Helm Crag. Both Gibson Knott and Helm Crag looked more imposing than they actually were, with both of them being quick to climb without needing too much effort.
Helm Crag is a great little hill, often climbed on its own from Grasmere, and unique thanks to the dramatic rock formations found on its summit – one known as ‘the howitzer’ or ‘the old lady playing the organ’, which is the true summit, and another which is called ‘the lion and the lamb’. We didn’t climb up to the top of the Howitzer for safety reasons (there’s a hefty drop off the other side), and it’s said even Wainwright himself chose not to scramble up it. Sensible man!
There were quite a few other people at the top of Helm Crag: it’s an understandably popular walk, having great views and being relatively quick to climb from Grasmere. The walk down was actually really enjoyable, being steep enough to get down reasonably quickly, but not severe enough to bring on the end of hike jelly legs. The foxgloves were popping out all the way down which provided a cracking contrast with all of the greens too – and I was glad this was how we were finishing up the walk rather than the long trudge down the road.
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. There are sheep throughout this walk, as well as some drops in places, and this coupled with the road section meant that we kept our dogs on leads throughout. While stile free, there’s also not much in the way of water for dogs to have a drink, so we were glad we’d carried extra for the dogs.
Base Brown
The weather was forecast to go downhill from this point, but miraculously, Tuesday brightened up significantly and was forecast for an only a quick shower in the morning. Excellent, we thought, and set off for another big walk from our Graham Uney book to bag Base Brown, Green Gable, Brandreth and Grey Knotts. The route also included Great Gable, but our plan was to skip this climb, having already bagged Great Gable along with Kirk Fell. Parking in Seathwaite was plentiful along the roadside, but it’s worth knowing that in the summer months, Seathwaite campsite opens up one of their fields for the public to park in too.
There’s a steeply pitched path running up along the waterfall you can see from the road in Seathwaite, which has a fun scrambly section where you’ll need to use your hands to get up (not scary from a drops perspective, but you’ll need to pay attention to your feet to avoid a trip). Unfortunately, the weather forecast had lied to us, and once we were clear of the scramble heavy rain and strong winds set in. We very quickly became drenched (luckily we had our waterproofs), but with no sign of it abating and in fact the weather forecast reverting to rain all day, we made the call to turn back and return to the car – no one wants to be out on the fells in the rain all day. Very frustrating to have been so close to the summit of Base Brown, and the descent down the scramble in the rain was a lot less fun than the climb up, but it’ll still be there another day.
From this point in the week, it got wetter and wetter. We did still manage to get out for a walk every day though: come back next week to find out where we went to dodge the rain, as well as all the details about where we stayed.
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