Category: Book One The Eastern Fells

Wainwright’s Book One The Eastern Fells

All the hills of the Eastern Fells in height order with the sixteen walks that took me over them. Click on the hill or the walk to read the post. Scroll down to use the interactive map for hill location and route. 

1.Helvellyn 950m 3,117ft 8.Great Dodd 857m 2,812ft 15.Great Rigg 766m 2,513ft 22.Middle Dodd 654 m 2,146 ft 29.Low Pike 508m 1,667ft
2.Nethermost Pike 891m 2,923ft 9.Stybarrow Dodd 843m 2,766ft 16.Hart Side 756m 2,480ft 23.Little Hart Crag 637m 2,090ft 30.Little Mell Fell 505m 1,657ft
3.Catstycam 890m 2,920ft 10.St Sunday Crag 841m 2,759ft 17.Seat Sandal 736m 2,415ft 24.Birks 622m 2,041ft 31.Stone Arthur 500m 1,640ft
4.Raise 883m 2,897ft 11.Hart Crag 822m 2,697ft 18.Clough Head 726m 2,382ft 25.Heron Pike 612m 2,008ft 32.Gowbarrow Fell 481m 1,578ft
5.Fairfield 873m 2,864ft 12.Dove Crag 792m 2,598ft 19.Birkhouse Moor 718 m 2,356 ft 26.Hartsop above How 570m 1,870ft 33.Nab Scar 450m 1,476ft
6.White Side 863m 2,831ft 13.Watson’s Dodd 789m 2,589ft 20.Sheffield Pike, 675 m 2,215 ft 27.Great Mell Fell 537m 1,762ft 34.Glenridding Dodd 442m 1,450ft
7.Dollywaggon Pike 858m 2,815ft 14.Red Screes 776m 2,546ft 21.High Pike, 656 m 2,152 ft 28.High Hartsop Dodd 519m 1,703ft 35.Arnison Crag 433m 1,421ft

 

 

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Birkhouse Moor and Catstyecam

It’s the Queens Platinum Jubilee Weekend and Seventy years of Her Majesty on the Throne is being marked by street parties up and down the land and a double Bank Holiday. Even the weather is paying homage with warmth and sunshine. Not one for street parties, or pomp and circumstance I have managed to squeeze into Gillside campsite in Glenridding, the perfect starting point to climb the remaining two hills of Book One, Birkhouse Moor and Catstyecam and bring my journey through Book One, The Eastern Fells Fells to its conclusion.

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Great Rigg, Heron Pike and Nab Scar

Gazing out at the glorious views of Lakeland from the summit of Great Rigg I feel a little melancholic. This is my first mountain summit since turning sixty. I remember well my first trip to the Lake District. In 1983, aged twenty one, a mate and I drove over from Yorkshire where I was stationed at the time. We were with a couple of girls we fancied in a very old VW Beetle owned by one the girls. We walked around Keswick before heading up to Watendlath for a dip in the tarn and then a walk up High Tove. On the way back to Yorkshire the Beetle broke down several times and had to be coaxed back to life with a bit of WD40. When you’re 21 thinking about being 60, well you may as well be thinking about being dead. But here I am, very much alive, still climbing hills 39 years later.

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Hart Crag and Fairfield from Dovedale

Having had the pleasure of walking down Dovedale last summer after climbing Hartsop Above How, today I have the equal pleasure of walking up it. The Dovedale valley is quite rightly regarded as one of the most delightful of Lakeland valleys. It’s varied in terrain and picturesque in appearance. Starting in the pastoral landscape of Hartsop, it follows a dancing Dovedale Beck up past waterfalls and then narrows and steepens in its higher reaches into an enclave that provides enticing views far above to the imposing Dove Crag with its popular cave, known as The Priests Hole. At the top it opens out onto the flat plateau of Houndshope Cove just below the Crag and provides extensive views down the valley to Patterdale and across Kirkstone to the Far Eastern Fells and the Pennines beyond.

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The Pikes and Dove Crag from Ambleside

It’s my first trip to Lakeland this year. The busyness of life has kept me away but here I am on a Friday evening in early March stopping in what is described as an ‘Aire’ on the outskirts of Ambleside. It’s next to the football club and seems to be the only place in town that can accommodate campervans. I’m here with the intention of doing the Fairfield Horseshoe, a classic Lakeland ridge walk that starts and finishes in Ambleside. One of the best views of it by the way is from the middle of Lake Windermere.

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A Walk up Stone Arthur

It’s not often, hardly ever in fact that you get to see the summit of the hill you are about to climb from your start point. Y Garn in Snowdonia is one such hill that comes to mind (you can read my blog about that walk Here). The hill I am going to walk up today, Stone Arthur is another and pulling on my boots in the lay-by outside Grasmere village I can see it’s rocky top poking up invitingly through the leafless winter trees.

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Red Screes and Middle Dodd

I’m back at Sykeside campsite to complete a walk that was cut short a few weeks ago because of storm Arwen and bad weather. Today’s walk will take in Red Screes and Middle Dodd via Caiston Glen and Scandale Pass. Once again the weather is rather peculiar. For the last few days, high pressure has settled over the whole of the country trapping cold air underneath it and causing a country wide temperature inversion. For days on end there have been cloud inversions in the Lakeland valleys as they remain below freezing but the tops bask in sunshine and warmth. I wonder if these unusual weather patterns are a sign of things to come because of climate change. I am thankful though that we are not having to contend with drought, floods or wildfires as some parts of the World have to.

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High Hartsop Dodd and Little Hart Crag in the Snow

Standing on top of High Hartsop Dodd with the snowfall becoming increasingly heavy I wondered whether history was about to repeat itself. One of the rules I have set myself on this journey through the Wainwright’s is to get a view off each mountain summit. This was the second time I had stood in this very spot in as many months. The first I didn’t count as the cloud came down and obscured the view. Was this second attempt going to go the same way. Should I carry on and hope the forecasted ‘snow shower’ passed or should I turn back yet again?

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Hartsop above How and Dovedale

Last night I stepped out of the campervan at Aira Force and was greeted by a cloudless sky and the sight of the Milky Way above my head. I turned off the headtorch and could see a billion stars, all merged together, stretching out in that distinctive long milky band across the inky black clear night sky. As I stared up, transfixed by the sight and trying to remember the last time I saw this glorious spectacle a shooting star shot straight across the sky burning out over the northern horizon. Light pollution generally stops me seeing the Milky Way so this is a treat and I go to bed marveling at the sheer immensity and beauty of this universe that we all inhabit.

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The Helvellyn Ridge, Dollywaggon Pike to Raise

Starting today’s walk at Dunmail Raise, nearly 800ft above sea level does seem a little bit like cheating. I suppose though, unless you decide to climb every hill from the seaside you’re not starting from zero anywhere, so I comfort myself with this fact as I climb over the stile and head slowly up the hill and away from the traffic noise of the A591. A feature of the eastern fells seems to be giant ferns that often cover the lower slopes and today is no exception with the path forging a thin stone line between a mass of greenery that soaks my trousers with the morning dew. Today’s walk will take me up onto the Helvellyn ridge from Grisedale Tarn which becomes a high level highway taking in Dollywaggon Pike, Nethermost Pike, Helvellyn itself, White Side and finally Raise before dropping down the Sticks Pass into Thirlmere.

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