Hiking The Wainwright Fells

I’ve said before to surround yourself with like minded individuals. I’ve been injured recently and to keep my knee mobile I have been walking a lot and so when a friend and I discussed doing more of that and the subject of walking the Wainwrights came up we both said yes without needing to think about it.

We soon got to planning how and when we would start and I am writing this as we have had our first trip to the Lake District and ticked off 11!

What Are The Wainwrights?

Alfred Wainwright MBE was a fell walker and published author of a volume of books relating to the Lakeland Fells.

There are 214 fells in the Lake District that are named after Alfred Wainwright. There are lots of websites with information a plenty about how to go about these, lists to tick each fell off, distances, elevation and much more!

When people aim to complete the Wainwrights they may refer to it as hill bagging and the objective is to climb/tick off as many as you can.

What Is A Crag/Fell/Pike/Pass/Knott?

There are various names to the climbs but the majority fall into the following:

• Crag – a steep rugged rock or cliff
• Fell – a mountain or a very big hill
• Pike – a peak
• Pass – a gap in a mountain or ridge
• Knott – hill
• Rigg – ridge

Reference Material

Excited for a new challenge I got on Amazon straight away to find some books and ordered one to tick off the fells as we complete them. I will be honest I thought it was a pocket sized book and it is A4, quite large and I got one for each of us – we joked that they were similar to a colouring book.

When wandering around Keswick we actually found these in a local shop, which are much more convenient.

I also ordered the Lake District map set from Ordnance Survey.

How To Tick Off The Wainwrights

We found a great website by The Walking Englishman who had information on how you complete the Wainwrights in the fewest number of walks (that number is 36 walks by the way). The journey to the Lake District for us is around 5/6 hours in the car each way so not something we can easily do every weekend and so there was an appeal to finding out how we could complete as many as possible per walk.

This website has the fells listed, grouped into the 36 walks with further information per walk that includes distance, elevation and how many fells are ticked off per walk.

It also provides GPX files per walk and references the Ordnance Survey maps that I had already purchased. My friend also has the Ordnance Survey app on her phone.

How We Started

We agreed that a long weekend would be most ideal, both because it would be less holiday days to take from work and makes most sense given the time the round trip to and from the Lake District would take us.

We looked at the routes and how we could tick off the most on our first trip and decided to start with The Newlands Watershed, which includes 10 of the fells. This turned out to be a little ambitious for our first walk and we met others along the way who were doing 1 or 2 and we realised we were perhaps trying to go from zero to hero. We ended up completing 7 the first day, 3 the following day and then a final 1 before heading home. Those 11 completed include:

• Dale Head
• Hindscarth
• Robinson
• Knott Rigg
• Ard Crags
• Scar Crags
• Causey Pike
• High Spy
• Maiden Moor
• Cat Bells
• Castle Crag

We created a spreadsheet (love a spreadsheet – don’t judge me) to include a list of all the individual fells and also the 36 walks so we could easily track our progress.

Accommodation

There is so much accommodation in the Lake District and it varies massively! It can vary from a tent up to luxury holiday rentals and price varies from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Knowing this would be the first of many trips we had a budget in mind and were open to any options aside from tent camping. We found a lot of holiday rentals had check in and out on Friday and Monday’s only and this was not negotiable to add a day either side, which we wanted, with a Thursday to Monday stay so that ruled out some options. We were also looking for accommodation where dogs are allowed.

We ended up booking a yurt at Inside Out Camping in Keswick. This was a site with yurts in their own private field, located next to a stream and close by to the walking trails.

Kit

Both of us have dogs and appropriate clothes etc for hiking so to all intents and purposes we were good to go. But you can always have more stuff!

The weather in the Lake District can be temperamental so we knew we needed a kit list for the hikes and this included the following:

• clothing layers so we can remove/add as needed (I find some of my MTB tops great for hiking as the material wicks sweat really well)
• hat, buff, gloves, socks
• hiking boots (I also took a spare pair of trail shoes too)
• backpack/bag to carry essentials
• water bottle
• jet boil
• travel mug/flask
• battery pack/charger cables
• headtorch (just in case – plus spare batteries)
• rubbish bag (always leave no trace and take litter home with you)
• first aid kit plus foil blanket
• tissues/wet wipes
• snacks (obviously)

Following our first weekend we covered over 35 miles hiking and are now 11 fells ticked off and will update you more as our adventures continue!

Also huge shout out to the third furry member of our little hiking group – Max, who was an absolute trooper!

Have you done the Wainwrights? Any hints and tips you want to share feel free!