Fell walking
We spend most of our holidays walking in the hills, mainly in Britain, but also in other countries. There is nothing quite like it.
Often we just make circular walks each day, but on many holidays we have walked an end to end route taking many days. These include inn to inn holidays in France, Catalonia and Switzerland, and several of the longer long distance paths in the British Isles, including:
- The Pennine Way – Just over 250 miles more or less following the Pennines from Edale in Derbyshire to Hadrian's Wall, and then on through Northumberland and the Cheviots to Kirk Yetholme in southern Scotland. This was the first official long distance path to be created, and the first that we walked. It takes you successively across hills and valleys, through varied terrain. Even the names of the streams change along its length, from brooks to becks to burns.
- The West Highland Way – About 100 miles from the outskirts of Glasgow, up one side of Loch Lomond, skirting Rannoch Moor and via Glen Nevis into Fort William . A lot of it follows old tracks, so it tends to go between hills rather than over them. The days walking alongside Loch Lomond are much less flat than you might imagine. It gets better father north.
- The Rob Roy Way – A fairly easy walk, mostly along old tracks with some along the line of a disused railway, just in the Highlands. It runs from Drymen to Pitlochry (but we started at Aberfeldy). Pitlochry has an excellent theatre , making a good end to the holiday.
- The Coast to Coast Walk – 200 miles crossing the country from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hoods Bay in N Yorkshire. Paradoxically if you walk it in an easterly direction, as most people do, for the first and last mile or so you are actually heading west. The route goes through successive, quite different, types of terrain: the Cumbrian coastal strip, the central Lakes, the Shap fells, the gritstone west Pennine moors, the limestone Yorkshire dales, the flat, agricultural Vale of Mowbray, the North York moors and the East Yorkshire coastal hinterland. During this walk, we managed to see two theatre plays, one in Grassmere and one at Robin Hoods Bay, as well as a slide lecture at Reeth! And I got some bell ringing at Kirby Stephen and Richmond.
- The Dingle Way – The whole way is 180 km, starting and ending at Tralee, but we did a slightly shorter version from Camp to Cloghane. The official route avoids most of the summits, but we made a few diversions to include some. The summit ridge of Mount Brendon was one of my most memorable 'perfect' bits of walking. But don't ask about the day that includes walking along 7 miles of soft sandy beach!
- The Conemara Way – An easy 80 km walk from Westport on the Coast, to Oughterard just north of Galway, with varied walking and scenery.
- Offa's Dyke Path – 177 miles from Chepstow to Prestatyn, more or less following the Welsh-English border, with quite a lot of it along the line of Offa's Dyke. It has some very good stretches of walking, including the Hatterall Ridge, Hay Bluff, Hergest Ridge and the Clwyds. But a lot of the route consists of endless fields and styles, with far more climbing than you would imagine. Even on the parts that don't go very high, the continual up and down over small hills adds up to a lot – 3500 feet on one day! The real anti climax is in Prestatyn. After walking along spectacular cliffs, you descend through the town to end the walk between a funfair and a pleasure beach. Not very inspiring.
For more information about long distance footpaths, see the Ramblers website.
There is a tiny selection of the pictures from these holidays below, to give you a feel for the magic of hill walking.
Also have a look at Ann Bowker's Mad about Mountains . It has some superb collection of pictures, and it is continually updated with pictures of her two most recent walks. Be warned though – if you live far from the Lakes, like me, it will make you very envious of someone who has them on her doorstep.
Other good Lakeland sites are Sean McMahon's Striding Edge and Andrew Leaney's Lakeland Fells.
I also give a talk on fell walking.
Pictures
Here is a tiny selection of pictures to give a flavour of fell walking. Click on each to enlarge or see all pictures together .
