Volume Four: The Southern Fells
Sort of the greatest hits of the Lakeland Fells. Not many fillers in this lot! (OK, a few)
The boundaries of Volume 4 are a bit odd. While most of the other volumes feel self-contained with no or few high ground connections to the adjoining volumes, Volume 4 has a rather messy northern boundary: the arm of high ground containing Allen Crags and Glaramara extends far to the north into the upper reaches of Borrowdale. Then again it’s hard to construct an argument for including this ridge in either the Central or Western Fells volumes so maybe it was the least worst option plus it means that the major crossroads of Esk Hause is contained in a single book rather than being on the boundary of a couple.
Volume 4 is really about three mountain blocks: the Scafell massif, Bowfell and its cohorts and the Coniston fells. All would star in any of the other volumes, to put them into one seems a bit unfair, an embarrassment of riches. As Wainwright himself put it: “Folk have been waiting for this one.”
My Wainwright “journey” began and finished in this volume: Illgill Head and Whin Rigg were the first, way, way back in 1970 Green Crag being my final summit in 2025, they are in sight of each other across Eskdale (oh, and Mitredale). In between I made many ascents of the main tops, I have probably climbed Bowfell close to 100 times.
Given just how good, iconic even, some of these tops are, I’ve no firm recollection of my first visits to many of them. Conversely I’ve a reasonable idea of when I did the lesser or outlying tops because of my later efforts. Most of the Coniston and Bowfell tops will have been done during school fell walks - with them being readily accessible from the south of the district whereas getting lots of schoolkids over to Eskdale or Wasdale would have eaten up much of the day. The Scafell range could have been later, say late 1970s, when I was doing a lot of fell walking prior to taking up climbing in 1980.
One misty day whilst walking down from Esk Hause towards Sprinkling Tarn I was stopped by a French walker: “Where,” he asked “is the refuge?” Somewhat puzzled I asked him to explain. He got his map out and pointed to... “shelter” I suddenly realised his mistake - he’d seen this and assumed that it was a mountain hut similar to those that are spread throughout the Alps. It was rather disheartening to tell him that it was just a cross of stone walls.
Another Esk Hause tale involved a couple who were clearly not quite where they thought they were (a polite way of saying “lost”). “Could you point out where we are on this map please?” Sure - I took their map and pointed my finger about a metre off one edge. Yep, they’d brought the wrong map. I walked away to avoid the ensuing domestic.
The aforementioned outlier of Glaramara was one of the last tops to visit - I’d been close when doing the Borrowdale Fell Race but not actually visited the summit. A friend was having a 60th birthday bash in Langdale so took the opportunity to head over. At first glance it might seem odd to walk in from Langdale but a look at the map shows that Glaramara is fairly central. For a bit of variation I headed up Sticks Pass then round by Rossett Pike before the out and back along the Allen Crags - Glaramara ridge. The return to Langdale was via Rossett Gill, always rough whether in ascent or descent.