It’s never harder to leave the Lakes than when the sun is shining. After a week of great weather, our final morning treated us to clear blue skies and glorious sunshine. Although, we weren’t complaining after the fantastic week we’d had. We definitely needed to squeeze in one last walk before we went – preferably including a few Wainwrights. The tricky part was that temperatures were set to climb to 20°C, so we needed to finish before it got too hot for the dogs. The difficulty was that now we’re well into the Wainwrights, we don’t have many left that you can bag in a ‘quicker’ walk. After much perusal of the map, we decided to tick off two of the more obscure fells: Grey Knotts and Brandreth.
A quick Wainwright bagging mission
Grey Knotts and Brandreth fall, I think, into the category of ‘will only visit if you’re bagging Wainwrights’. Surrounded on all sides by better known neighbours, they’re lesser known and unlikely to ever draw crowds of people.
We used this route from WalkLakes as inspiration, but plotted our own course using the OS maps app. Risky, I know, but we wanted to make sure we were back to the car well before it got hot. You can see our OS maps route here, which is about 3.2 miles.
Parking and a steep start
Parking is plentiful at Honister slate mine. There’s a National Trust car park which is free for members, then another car park operated by the slate mine. If you aren’t a National Trust member, the slate mine is the cheaper of the two. From the car park we picked up the path sign posted ‘footpath to Grey Knotts’. Parking here cuts out a lot of climbing, but the downside is that it throws you straight in at a nice steep section. There’s no gentle warm up!
Intermingled with the path are a few rocky sections, where you need a hand here and there to pull yourself up. Nothing too onerous or difficult – just harder on tired legs! Looking back for the odd breather, Dale Head looms rather imposingly in the foreground. Definitely one of the Wainwrights I’ve found hardest, and I was glad looking over that it’s not still on the ‘to-do’ list!
Grey Knotts – knott grey at all?
The climb up Grey Knotts felt long but in reality it didn’t take more than an hour. The fell takes its name from the rocky, grey tors at its summit (apparently). And, once you’re at the top, the view is lovely: I think it’s potentially a better view than the ones we had the day before from Haystacks and Fleetwith Pike. And, we only saw one other walker. Maybe that’s why I liked it more? Although, I can imagine that on a greyer day, it would be much less inspiring.
From Grey Knotts, it’s an easy amble across to Brandreth. While pathless, it wasn’t overly boggy or tiresome. The dogs very much enjoyed dipping in the tarns dotted around here—rather like the Lake District’s own version of infinity pools. As we walked the landscape continued to evolve, with a great view over Ennerdale and High Crag, Pillar and Kirk Fell all appearing too. It always boggles my mind how close everything in the Lakes actually is – it’s just driving around it all that takes time!
Detour deferred
The summit of Brandreth isn’t quite as inspiring. Most noteworthy was the proximity to Green Gable – extremely tempting for a quick out and back detour. However, that would significantly deviate from our planned ‘get round as fast as possible’ approach, and Green Gable is surrounded by other fells we’ll need to visit in the future anyway. So, one to save for another day.
An obstacle in the path (literally)
Up to this point, our home made route had been quite successful (shockingly immediate steep climb aside). Beginning our descent from Brandreth, we hit our first obstacle: literally. A lovely three foot fence running straight across the footpath. Faced with the choice of walking along the fence for an indefinite period looking for a gate or stile, or simply climbing over, we went for the latter. With no stile or gate guaranteed, we decided to just save ourselves the time and lifted the dogs over. Thanks Merry for using me as a springboard and attempting to parkour over by himself. Especially thanks for doing it just after he’d had a dip in the tarn.
The ‘footpath’ is non-existent here, but the grass was dry (excellent) and the gradient manageable for pathless walking. There are just a few bouldery patches to navigate around, but this wasn’t hard. It’s not long before a good path reappears. I do wonder if we’d turned left and followed the fence for a bit, if we’d have found the other end of this path. Nevermind! It’s straightforward walking from here back down to the start – and not too hard on tired legs either.
Dog friendly rating: Grey Knotts & Brandreth
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. This is a tricky one: it’s nice and quiet so good for reactive dogs, and has lots of water along the way. But, we did have ‘the fence incident’, which left me glad that we can easily lift ours if needed. The route also has two stiles, both avoidable by sneaking dogs through gaps under the fence or by crossing a lower part of the fence further down.
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