Fell walking
We have spent most of our holidays walking in the hills, mainly in Britain, but also in other countries. There is nothing quite like it.
You can skip to the pictures if you prefer.)
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
- 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 Yetholm 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 for streams change as you go farther north, 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 farther north.
- 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 included walking along 7 miles of soft sandy beach with no shade from the burning sun!
- 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 Grasmere and one at Robin Hoods Bay, as well as a slide lecture at Reeth! And I got some bell ringing at Kirkby Stephen and Richmond.
- The Connemara Way – An easy 80 km walk from Westport on the Coast, to Oughterard just north of Galway, with varied walking and scenery.
- The Rob Roy Way – A fairly easy walk, mostly along old tracks with some along the line of 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.
- 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, the Hergest Ridge and the Clwyds. But a lot of the route consists of endless fields and stiles, 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, which is not very inspiring.
- The Kintyre Way – 87 miles from Tarbert to Dunaverty, criss-crossing the Kintyre peninsula, and ending at its southern end. The walking is fairly easy, with much of it on roads and forest tracks. If you are looking for 'real' fell walking, there isn't much of it until the last day. There is good scenery in places, but the forest walking can be uninspiring. A detour on the ferry from Tainloan to visit the gardens on Gigha is well worth it if the weather is good.
For more information about long distance footpaths, see the Long Distance Walkers Association or National Trails in England & Wales. or Scotland's Great Trails.. John Butler 's End to End Walk incorporates several other long distance paths.
There is a tiny selection of the pictures , from these and other holidays, to give you a feel for the magic of hill walking.
We have also done many inn to inn walks in Europe
There are several websites with pictures of fell walking, including Lakeland sites like Sean McMahon's Striding Edge , Andrew Leaney's Lakeland Fells. and John Butler's Lake District , and Scottish Highlands. My favourite was Ann Bowker's site Mad About Mountains, which had superb collections of pictures, continually being updated with her recent walks. She was a remarkable woman, awarded the MBE in 2003 for services to tourism. Living far from the Lakes, as I do, I was envious of her having the fells on her doorstep. But after she died in 2016 her site vanished from the web.
I 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 and use arrows to move between them.
All material Copyright © 2002 - 2019 John Harrison.
