UKC

I have nearly finished running/walking all the wainwrights over a couple of years.

I went up Seathwaite Fell a couple of days ago as part of the 2013 Lake District Mountain Trial route.

I noticed when I got back that he summit didn't look to be quite in the right place on my mapping app, so I read Wainwright and it says.

"a cairn at 1970', buttressed by blistered rocks, is generally regarded as the summit of the fell although obviously it isn't"

I went to the top, not the generally regarded summit, i'm not going to ask if it counts or if I have to go back - that's up to me. That quote did make me chuckle.

In reply to ablackett:

Think there are around ten examples of the Wainwright summit not being the actual top of the fell - Glaramara and Illgill Head are other examples. There was a good piece on such quirks in the LDWA mag Strider a couple of years ago - also on those odd fells that feel like they ought to have been given chapters in AW's books but weren't, eg Iron Crag.

Good luck with the last few summits, btw - have you left a particular one until last?

In reply to Dave Hewitt:

When I was checking out the summits of the Bob Graham Round there were a couple of summits where there were potentially two or three locations for the actual highest point: Nethermost Cove, Great End and Brandreth. I tried using a GPS unit to differentiate them but the margin of error on the unit I had meant that I settled on "whichever".

As for Wainwrights - I've eight left to do. I know which will be my last, it's not too far from my first so nicely circular. I got to around 160 when I lived in the Lakes and I've found quite a number of the last sixty or so to be hardly worth the effort other than having a day out in the Lakes which is always worthwhile. Some are surprisingly good viewpoints but when you get "fells" which are simply points on a ridge, it's obvious that they are simply fillers-in to make the book a reasonable size.

So like any list really (Munros, Hard Rock, etc).

In reply to Bob:


Snap, almost - was up Steel Knotts recently which took me down to nine to do. These include quite a few standards - eg Catbells, Latrigg, Great End - it's curious what gets left until late on. Dunno how long I'll take to get up these nine (probably with Catbells as the last one), as I only tend to do the obscure ones as part of bigger rounds, and living 150-odd miles away with only four or five long weekends in the Lakes per year is also a factor.

Am going to end up with quite a lopsided round, given that one of the fells has already seen over 50 ascents. Actually, I'm more interested in completing a joint round with my from-those-parts pal Gordon Ingall - thus far we're just short of 150 of the 214 in the climbed-together game. (He's been up over 10,000 Wainwrights in total - some going.)

In reply to Dave Hewitt:

I've been in the "Walk up two tops, drive somewhere, walk up another two" for a while now. The extreme example of this was: Rannerdale Knotts, drive; Knott Rigg & Ard Crags; drive; Barrow; drive; Castle Crag. Four different walks for five summits.

Some summits like Bowfell I've averaged over once a year for the past thirty years or so.

In reply to Bob:


I'll still very occasionally do that, but kind of went off it around 15 years ago towards the end of my main Marilynbagging days. Had a couple of days that took in four small Marilyns with drives between, but it felt too artificial and I can remember much preferring an on-foot circuit round two Knapdale things which had a rough and complicated section between and which took quite a bit longer than the equivalent climb-drive-climb version would have done.

A regular and knowledgeable poster on this site coined the excellent term "Twenty20 bagging" for the bag-drive-bag-drive-bag-etc thing. I guess I'm more suited to the slower pace of Test match bagging, or at least ODIs.


I almost feel obliged to take a wander up the Old Man by some route or other on the last morning whenever we're down at the in-laws base camp in Coniston. The aforementioned Gordon Ingall, he of the 10k Wainwrights, has been up Helvellyn at least once every year since 1959, a sequence of 56 straight years and quite possibly a record for consecutive-year ascents of a big UK hill.

In reply to Bob:

even walking up "fillers in" in horrible weather is better than being at work though! good luck with your last few Wainwrights

In reply to Bob:


Aye, me too. Did that sort of thing yesterday. AND, I found an unopened Werther's Original when me and the dog woke from our kip on top of Raven Crag.