⛰️ Lake District Fell Bagger

For every Wainwright (and Outlying Fell), see which Birketts you can bag on the same walk — with maps, parking, buses and weather.

👋 About this site — and me

I grew up in South Africa, where my father and brother used to take me camping out in the bush. Sleeping under a vast sky with nothing but the sounds of the night around you leaves a mark — even if it took me a few decades to fully appreciate it.

Back in England, life got in the way. A long stretch of inactivity and the inevitable weight gain that comes with it. I made a start in my late thirties — hiking, running, losing the weight — then life got in the way again. The usual story.

What pulled me back properly was the Yorkshire Three Peaks. I've done it more than a dozen times now, enough to know every boggy section by heart. I always assumed the Lake District fells were a step too far — proper mountains, properly serious.

Then in 2023, on holiday in Ambleside, I walked the Fairfield Horseshoe. Nine miles, 900 metres of ascent, and views that stopped me in my tracks. Something shifted that day. I came home and ordered a copy of Wainwright's Eastern Fells.

📋 The Wainwrights — work in progress

Completed: 72% of the 214 Wainwright fells

The Wainwrights became the goal — all 214 of them, from the modest humps above Penrith to the serious ridges of the Western Fells. I'm 72% of the way through. Along the way I started noticing all the other summits nearby that weren't on the list: close enough to bag on the same walk, but invisible unless you knew where to look.

🎯 Why the Birketts? Why this site?

The Birketts — 541 fells in the Lake District National Park with at least 30 metres of prominence and 1,000 feet of height — felt like the natural next chapter. I'll be passing half of them anyway on the way to Wainwright summits. I might as well be deliberate about it. When I retire, the plan is to go after the full 541.

The problem was the tooling. Juggling a fell-bagging app, a mapping site and a weather forecast across three browser tabs on a wet Saturday morning isn't fun. I wanted one page that told me: here's the Wainwright, here are the nearby Birketts, here's how to get there and park, here's the forecast, and here's a map. It didn't exist, so I built it.

Down the road I'll add the Synges, Fellrangers, Nuttalls and the rest. One list at a time.

🌄 What I hope this does

• Help others think beyond the Wainwrights. The 214 are wonderful — but there are hundreds of other summits up there with just as much character. This site tries to make them a little more visible.
• Give me something to look back on. Part of this is honestly a gift to my future self — something to sit with when the knees give out and the hills are too far away. A record of the good times.
• Get my kids up there. When they're old enough to head into the fells on their own, I want something useful waiting for them. Maybe they'll roll their eyes at dad's website. Maybe they won't.

📬 Get in touch

If you find an error, a missing parking spot, or just want to say you've been up there too — I'd genuinely love to hear from you. This is a personal project and very much a work in progress. You can contact me on LinkedIn.