Lake District
ULTIMATE WEEKEND ▲ 3 ROUTES
Spend a long weekend in the Lake District exploring a compact but complex group of fells.
If there’s just one thing you’ll remember from your time among the Coniston Fells, it’ll be the broad ridges linking the major tops together – ridges along which you’ll stride for mile after endless mile, where you’ll gaze across to neighbouring, mightier mountain groups as well as distant nations and where you’ll be able to discern, with all your senses, the approaching winter.
Those ridges feature in each of these walks, but there’s so much more besides… clambering up the rocky Steel Edge and Prison Band as part of the horseshoe route around the head of Greenburn; exploring fascinating, centuries-old mine workings on an unusual approach to Swirl How; and enjoying the rare solitude of an off-piste ascent of the Old Man, one of Lakeland’s busiest peaks.
ROUTE10 Greenburn Round
ROUTE 11 Swirl How & Dow Crag
ROUTE 12 Old Man via Raven Tor
Lake District
DIFFICULTY MEDIUM
DISTANCE 13KM
TIME 5 HOURS
TOTAL ASCENT 890M
PEAK BAGGER STATS WAINWRIGHTS 3 TRAIL 100S 1
Greenburn Round
1 NY306009 Climb the steps at the south end of the Tilberthwaite Gill car park. Having passed several quarry entrances on the left, ignore the path dropping right into the gill. About 900m into the walk, the path swings south-west and passes the last of the trees in the gill. Take the faint trail on the right here, soon fording Crook Beck.
2 NY299006 Bear right (roughly north) on a trail that, in 160m, nears a footbridge. Don’t cross, but instead head west-north-west, climbing beside an old mining level on a bracken-swamped trail. Stepping on to a clearer path about 70m beyond the bridge, turn right (north). After a few strides, bear left (north-west) along a lesser trail. Having passed beneath a line of bare rock, the trail swings west and then south-west. Before long, a broad, grass-covered ramp leads directly to the base of the rocky gullies that bring spice to the ascent of Steel Edge. The lower gullies are scree filled, but the top gully requires hands on rock. After just a few easy manoeuvres, you find yourself o
