Features & data reports
The long reads — sourced, honest, and about what really happens on the fells.
Deeper pieces than a route write-up: data reports on mountain safety, notes on the seasons, and the odd bit of Lakeland history — every claim referenced, and the things we couldn't evidence left out.
Mountain Rescue report
78% of call-outs come after midday — the sourced numbers behind the fells, and what they mean for getting home safely.
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Guide
How to use hikes.guide
Five ways into hikes.guide depending on what you are here for: your first fell, bagging the 214, walking in bad weather, photographing sunrise, or getting there with a dog, a buggy or no car.
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Skills Long read
Navigating in Cloud
A per-fell score for how hard each of the 214 Wainwright fells is to navigate in cloud — computed from the shape of the ground and checked against the fells everyone knows are traps. Relative and deliberately cautious; carry map and compass.
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Skills Long read
How to start hiking
Field-tested beginner's guide to hill-walking in the Lake District — what to do, what to carry, what it really costs, and the mistakes I made so you don't have to.
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Safety Long read
Walking in Bad Weather
How to walk safely in bad weather in the Lake District: the Go / Go-Lower / No-Go Scale, the conditions one at a time, the evidence, kit and emergencies — MWIS-calibrated, fully cited, with a live tool, a printable checklist and an alternative finder.
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Safety Long read
Downloadable routes
Why a crowd-sourced GPX line is not a checked route: the national rescue data, how a bad line is born in the Lake District (with the Barf and Broad Stand cases), the route-vs-track distinction, a sniff-test for spotting a bad line, and an honest account of what vetted provenance means. Calibrated and fully cited.
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Safety Long read
Phone Satellite SOS
What phone satellite SOS really does for UK hillwalkers: the two technologies, the UK emergency-only reality, why it fails in gullies and corries, why a 999 call is still your best lifeline, and phone-vs-inReach. Honest, dated and fully sourced.
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Data & reports Long read
Most-Searched Wainwrights
Which of the 214 Wainwright fells people actually search for — the top 10 take about 67% of all interest — set against our own terrain-exposure rating and the Google-Ngrams ‘authored fame’ signal. Honestly framed; the ambiguous names shown openly.
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Guide
The Lake District glossary
256 Lake District hiking and fell-walking words explained, plus the sourced meaning of all 214 Wainwright fell names. What does Glaramara mean? Why is it a tarn and not a lake?
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Data & reports
The View Report
A sourced sightline for every Wainwright: how many other fells are in view, how far the horizon runs, and which coasts and countries appear on the clearest
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Guide
The Path Beneath Your Boots
Every Lakeland fell path is hand-built and hand-maintained by Fix the Fells — at £200–£400 a metre and £500,000 a year, all charity-funded. How a fell path is
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Safety Long read
First aid
Field-tested Lake District first aid — ankle and lower-leg injuries, hypothermia staging, blisters, cardiac arrest on remote terrain, plus an honest evacuation
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Safety
First-aid pocket cards
Four A7 first-aid cards from one single-sided sheet of A4: DR ABC, calling for help, the evacuation decision, hypothermia, and a route plan you fill in by hand.
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Skills Long read
Navigation
A field-tested guide to navigating the Lake District fells — OS maps, compass bearings, contours and grid references, plus a hard-won comparison of GPX
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Data & reports Long read
Climate report
Sixty years after Wainwright's last Pictorial Guide, the sourced data on how climate change has reshaped the Lake District fells — warmer, wetter and less white — and what it means for hikers. Every figure dated, based and attributed.
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Data & reports
April, Not August
The best time to visit the Lake District, from data rather than opinion: April averages 16.0 sunny days against August's 10.2, and 11 of 12 car parks are at their busiest in August.
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Data & reports
Beck-water metals: the dataset
The Environment Agency's dissolved lead, cadmium, zinc and copper measurements for Lake District becks, joined to the walking routes that cross them. Open data (OGL v3.0), with methodology and a CSV download.
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Safety
Can you drink the water?
The filter you're told to buy removes what a Lakeland beck mostly hasn't got, and none of what it has below the old mines. Which becks carry lead and cadmium, why gear can't fix it, and where the water is fine.
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Data & reports Long read
Charge while you climb
Which Lake District walks you can actually charge an electric car at, and the 47 places we publish parking for that have nothing within 5 km. Every charger verified against the operator.
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Data & reports
How we compute the view
The method behind hikes.guide's computed 360-degree summit panoramas: Copernicus GLO-30 terrain, ray-cast horizons, a two-axis confidence model (geometry + haze), and how we verify it. Computed, not photographed.
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Data & reports
How we predict red skies
The method behind hikes.guide's evening sunset verdict: cloud aloft as a canvas, a clear path for the light, summits out of cloud. Regional by design, no
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Data & reports
Lake District sunrise from the summits
Almanac sunrise assumes a flat horizon. On a fell you are looking at other fells. Computed sunrise and sunset for 214 Lakeland summits, solved against each summit's own 360-degree skyline - with the error band stated.
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Getting there Long read
Last petrol, last shop, last cashpoint
Where the last filling station, shop and cash machine actually are before each dead-end Lake District valley - measured along the road, verified against the operator or the statutory record, and dated.
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Safety Long read
Summer on the Fells
Adders: no deaths in Britain in fifty years. Wasps and bees: three or four a year. The fell itself: about 21 a year in the Lakes. The summer hazards ranked by evidence, not fear. Heat, water, lightning, cattle, ticks, adders and fire — with the honest gaps where no evidence exists.
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Bagging & lists
Terrain & access
The 144 quieter Lake District fells — the Birkett, Synge and Outlying tops, not one a Wainwright. 30 have no path to the summit, 83 finish across open ground. Which need real navigation, how steep, and where to check access — computed from open data.
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The 214 in the Fewest Walks
How many separate walks does it take to climb all 214 Wainwrights? 39 on 25 km / 1500 m days - and what a gentler cap really costs, which is not more walks but fewer fells.
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Safety
The descent is the dangerous half
In the largest studies, about 75% of hiker falls happen on the way down. The evidence, the biomechanics of eccentric loading, and the Lake District descents that will actually hurt.
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Bagging & lists
The fells map
A map of all 544 Lakeland tops by height, with the 214 Wainwrights picked out - which list a summit belongs to, not just where it is.
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Data & reports
The fells the map can't take you up
We checked 377 lesser-known Lake District fells against the open access datasets. 93% are clean. This is about the rest - and about access that exists on the ground but not on the map.
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Guide
The Howgill Fells
The Howgill Fells are not in the Lake District - they are in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, east of the M6. Wainwright gave them their own book.
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Getting there
The Lake District by bus
A map of which Lake District fells you can reach by bus: 249 of 598 have a checked stop within a kilometre and 129 more within five, with the walking distance to each.
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Getting there
The Lake District by train
Which Lakeland fells you can reach from each Cumbrian railway station on foot and by bus, with walking distances routed on the path network rather than measured in straight lines.
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Data & reports
The parking map
Every place we know of to leave a car for a walk in the Lake District - 1009 of them, with whether they charge, who runs them and what to do when one is full.
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Guide
The perfect round
We computed the best continuous round of all 214 Wainwrights over every mapped path and road in the Lake District. It comes out longer and hillier than the record - and the reason why is the interesting part.
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Bagging & lists
The relief map
A relief map of the Lake District: the shape of the ground itself, drawn with hachures from the Copernicus GLO-30 terrain model over the whole National Park.
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Bagging & lists
The walks map
A map of every walk we have recorded in the Lake District - 185 routes drawn from their own GPX tracks, coloured by length.
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Guide
The Westmorland and Furness Way
A 120-mile long-distance route through Westmorland and Furness, opening 15 September 2026. What is confirmed, our own measurement of the council's GPX files section by section, and which listed summits actually lie near the line.
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Two kinds of car park
Freedom-of-information data on 20 Lake District car parks shows two very different kinds of place: some sell 14.4× as much parking in August as January
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Bagging & lists
What else have you climbed?
Upload your GPX tracks and find out how many Birketts, Outlying Fells, Synges, Fellrangers and Nuttalls you have already climbed while bagging the Wainwrights. Runs entirely in your browser — your tracks never leave your device.
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Data & reports
Which fells these two long-distance routes cross
Two long-distance routes through Cumbria, measured the same way: which listed summits the Cumbria Way and the Westmorland and Furness Way actually pass, and how far off the line the rest of them sit.
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Guide
Winter on the Fells
What winter actually does to a Lake District walk: how much daylight each route has in December, what Mountain Rescue record as contributory factors, and what we are not qualified to teach.
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Bagging & lists
You’ve climbed more than you think
Finish the 214 Wainwrights and you have already climbed 91% of the Fellrangers, 42% of the Synges and over 209 Birketts — the Lakeland bagging lists overlap far more than most walkers realise. The numbers, and a tool to find your own.
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