Southern Wainwrights You Were A Delight!

A trip to the Lake District is now a firm annual date in my calendar. The timing in the year can vary and let’s be honest you never know with the weather but regardless it is now an annual feature.

This is now our fifth trip as we continue to tick off the Wainwrights. It is always a tough trip but amazing at the same time!

New Kit

You would think after four trips to the Lake’s and being very outdoorsy people that we would have all the kit already. But you can never have too much! So as per usual I added some more items to my kit list:

• Superdry Super Soft Printed Teddy Fleece. I am a sucker for a fleece and since living in Sweden it is my annual excuse when the weather turns to buy a new one. It has also been something my friend and I message each other when we book the Lake’s with a new fleece to buy. The colour in the pic does not show just how bright this is and I love it!
• Geometrical Pocket Tripod. At the summit of every fell we take a selfie and it is often a comedy moment of trying to prop a phone up on some rocks or something else so this seemed a good idea! I will be honest I could not get on with this – I have a phone case (as most people do) and just could not get this to work right and rocks were the better option. I would note that this is total user error as I showed it to my husband when I returned and he had it working in less than a minute.
• Revolution Race suitcase. We have two HUUB suitcases that have been amazing and although the bags themselves are in great conditions, the wheels have broken and they do not do replacements so a new case was needed. I have consistently been impressed with what I have bought from Revolution Race so this is my new addition that got its first outing in the Lake’s and I am very pleased with it.
• Revolution Race hiking leggings. You can never have too many pairs of hiking leggings and these always work for me!
• Acai Ascent Leggings. See comment above! This is my first pair from Acai – my friend has a lot of their kit and so they came recommended and I really liked them.
• Acai On The Go Tee. As above, following recommendation from my friend (she actually has this one) so added this to the kit although I found it came up small so didn’t take this with me.
• Flextail power bank. A bit like the leggings, having a spare power bank is always useful and this is much smaller than my current one.
• Flextail Headlamp. I will admit I first ordered just the battery because I did not read this properly and then after had to purchase the headlamp.
• Revolution Race hiking socks. I am a huge Stance fan but have had them for years and some need replacing and these were pink so that is reason enough! But there was a seam on the toe and it irritated me the whole time hiking with them on so these may be spare socks for the future unfortunately – definitely not for a longer hike.

Accommodation

This is the first trip where we have not stayed in Keswick. We always find that such a great base and have been able to walk to pubs and restaurants after a day of hiking. Having completed all the northern and north western fells we figured rather than drive for more than necessary every day to go further south, that we should look elsewhere as a base.

This time round we stayed at Judge’s Lodgings in Hawkshead. Lovely accommodation over three floors and one parking space round the back.

Hawkshead was a super cute little town with three pubs, a small supermarket and a number of local shops. We both did miss Keswick though I will be honest and we picked this because it would be closer to the southern fells but after the first few routes we found we were an hour away from most others unfortunately.

Wainwrights Completed

This time round we had looked at our map in advance and were hoping we could complete all of the Southern Fells, which included a total of 24 fells to summit. Unfortunately although we were staying in a more southern location some of these were over an hour and sometimes over an hour and a half from where we were so we were ticking off some that were closer to our location but still most were a fair drive away.

As it turned out my favourite summits were:

• Coniston Old Man – it was on my list as one I wanted to do on this trip and although it was definitely one of the more busier routes, it was a lovely hike with great views (as always).
• Hallin Fell – this only took 22 minutes to summit with gorgeous views across Ullswater and we joked if only more were that quick to tick off. I would note we spoke too soon as the next one was Bonscale Pike and the climb up to that was super steep, especially in the heat.

My least favourites were:

• Weatherlam – the route we had did the first summit at Holme Fell and then over to Weatherlam but it didn’t really seem like these needed to be paired and may have been better as two individual summits. The route over the Weatherlam was long and there was a lot of exposed climbing to reach the summit, which I am never a fan of.
• Fairfield – when I first saw this in the distance it was one of those where I genuinely wondered where the path was. We had wind that day and it looked like some sketchy scrambling would be required. It did not look any more appealing as we got closer but there was an obvious route up. I am never a fan of the scrambling – I got it done but was just not my favourite.
• Crinkle Crags – we went up from the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel and after walking through the valley for around 2km we started to climb. The views were stunning (as always) but it was really hot and the summit was not until over 3 miles in and this fell has multiple peaks including Gunson Knott, South Top, Long Top and two others so every time you think you are there you are not and there is more to scramble up. The clouds had also just covered the summit when we got there so there were no views at all.

Before this trip we were at 88 out of the 214 summits and we have finished this time round completing a further 31, which means our new total is now 119.

All in all it was a really successful positive trips as we hit 100 summits, got to halfway and then got to the countdown out of triple digits and into double digits.