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 the Cheviots to Kirk Yetholme in southern Scotland. This was the first official long distance path, 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 brook to beck to burn.
- 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. It gets better as you go 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, as most people do, 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, gritstone west Pennine moors, limestone Yorkshire dales, the 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!
- 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 added a few win. 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 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, and quite a lot of it along the line of Offa's Dyke. It includes 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. Even on the parts that don't go very high, the continual up and down over small hills adds up – 3500 feet on one day! The real anti climax is in Prestatyn. After walking along spectacular cliffs, you descend through the town to end that walk between a funfair and a pleasure beach.
For more information about long distance footpaths, see the Ramblers website.
There is a tiny selection of the pictures from these holidays to give you a feel for the magic of hill walking.
Also have a look at Ann Bowker's Mad about Mountains . As well as a superb collection of pictures, it has continually updated pictures of her two most recent walks.
Other good Lakeland sites are Sean McMahon's Striding Edge and Andrew Leaney's Lakeland Fells.
Pictures
See all pictures together , or click on each to enlarge.
