UKC

I have just noticed that one of my favourite fells, Caw (above duddon), is not a Wainwright. I wonder why, he must have walked it, it is a distinctive, seperate shapely top. Seems odd to me, anyone know why.
Cheers sjc

In reply to sjc:
And Thunacar Knots is. An indistinct pimple on the High Raise plateau.

In reply to sjc:

It's in the outlying fells book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlying_Fells_of_Lakeland

Without looking at the boundaries of the Southern Fells book, I think that that book stopped at Walna Scar

ALC

In reply to sjc:

because he was idiosyncratic! The oddest to me is to include Mungrisdale, then spend the whole section slagging it off for not being a proper top!

In reply to a lakeland climber: That would explain it, is White Maiden not one either.

In reply to sjc: It also seemed to be about just how many fells (chapters)he could fit in a book...Southern Fells is one of the biggest anyway!

In reply to sjc: None of the tops in the Lakes, are "Wainrights". They are fells and hills.

In reply to Paul Dooay: You are spot on. They are not Wainrights, they Wainwrights. The spelling is quite important to some of us....

In reply to sjc:

I believe Caw is in the Outliers Book which picks up various fells round the Lakes.

Often some of the lesser peaks and outliers are better than the biggers ones giving some superb viewpoints.

Mungrisdale Common is a weird one !! Why did he include it ? It is hardly discernable - even when passing by it on the Bob Graham.

In reply to sjc: Does seem a bit daft to ommit stuff like caw but I suppose he had to draw the line somewhere. My only experience of Caw was earlier this year, and I found it to be a lovely little hill. I didn't see a soul up there - so perhaps not being a Wainwright isn't such a bad thing.

In reply to Ron Kenyon:


A lass I was walking with had decided to do the Wainwrights and had about 120 under her belt when she got to Mungrisedale Common. looked at it and said: "If he thinks that's a hill the man's an idiot and I'm not doing them any more!" And she didn't.

In reply to sjc: Anyone who's done the Duddon valley fell race has a
healthy fear of Caw. You come down off White Pike and
there's 10 different ways you could go and they all look (and turn out to be) shit. My parents live in Coniston so I've done plenty of recces and I've still not got a route sorted out. Be glad
It's not yet a motorway the views are superb P

In reply to Wiley Coyote:
Mungrisedale Common is sufficiently remote from surrounding peaks to be a 'peak' in its own right. Even though it ain't a 'peak' of course. It's simply a wee rise on a hillside.

It's a lovely remote and happy stop-off when en-route from Blencathra to Skiddaw.

In reply to paul-1970: Wainwright never had a hard and fast definition of what counted as a seperate fell. He did say they had to be over 1,000 ft high and only Castle Crag (Borrowdale) came in below that in his original seven guides. A good book to read to get an insight into his methodology and technique is 'A Bit of Grit on Haystacks' by Dave Hewitt http://www.millracebooks.co.uk/books/a_bit_of_grit_on_haystacks.html

He was a strange, strange fellow, old Alf. He put Mungrisdale Common into his Northern Fells volume, then spent the whole chapter on it grousing about how it wasn't really a proper hill. No indeed. So why include it? Doh.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

and there's one just above Thirlmere IIRC which he suggests not bothering with!

In reply to DNS: quoted from AW's Central Fells -

"It can be said of very few fells that they are not really worth climbing; Armboth Fell is one of the few."

With a prominence of less than 100 feet, and the summit being described as "little better than a quagmire", he might be right.

In reply to Karl Lunt:

Thanks for the plug and kind words. I seem to have spent more time thinking about AW and the structure of the series than is good for anyone!
Re what is/isn’t in, a lot of it seems to boil down to AW having painted (or rather drawn) himself into a corner re the Central volume (book 3) and the Southern one (book 4). All the other books have pretty natural boundaries – especially the two eastern ones – but for some reason AW didn’t take Hardknott/Wrynose as a dividing line. Hence the Southern book includes several Borrowdale-ish things – I’ve yet to climb Rosthwaite Fell but from the map it’s hard to think it’s a natural contender for Southern status – it’s north of both Pillar and Fairfield.
Having Hardknott/Wrynose as a boundary would doubtless have thrown up other quirks, but would probably have meant fewer minor bumps in the Central book and would have seen Caw and White Maiden get chapters in the Southern one. An oddity of having the outer boundary at the Walna Scar Road is that one 2000ft Lakes fell stands outside the ringfence – Walna Scar itself.
Ultimately though it was AW’s choice and I don’t have any problem with that – in fact I actively like the subjective, quirky element of the thing. I love the seven-volume guide with a passion – in the first couple of books you can see him developing his style, but from Central onwards I think it’s a masterpiece.
Happy new year, by the way. Hope people have been out. The Ochils were in lovely nick today.