The 214 in the Fewest Walks
There is a trick to this question, and it is worth getting out of the way first: with no limit on the size of a day, the answer is one walk. We have already published it — the perfect round visits all 214 in a single continuous line. So “the fewest walks” is never a fact on its own. It is a function of how big a day you are willing to have, and the useful question is what a smaller day costs you.
We solved that, sixteen ways. Each combination of a distance cap and an ascent cap gets its own answer: the smallest number of separate walks that reaches every Wainwright it can reach, from 217 start points a person has actually verified. 15 of the 16 car-mode answers are proven minimums rather than good attempts — the solver reports a matching lower bound, so nothing smaller exists.
The curve, and the thing it would hide
Walks required above; fells actually reachable below, on the same axis. The two must be read together — see the note.
Three things the solve found
Gentle days do not finish the round
98 of the 214 cannot be reached at all on 10 km / 600 m days, there and back from a start point. Not “hard” — unreachable within that budget.Ascent binds. Distance is slack
39 walks is the fewest that still finishes all 214, on 25 km / 1500 m days. Loosening the distance cap barely moves the answer: at 600 m of ascent the 15 / 20 / 25 km caps all land on 85; at 900 m of ascent the 20 / 25 km caps all land on 86.Linear walks barely help
0–2 walks saved by allowing a walk to finish somewhere else on the same bus route — and nothing at all at 4 of the 16 caps. Only 23 of the 217 start points have a bus service, which is the whole explanation.All sixteen answers
| Distance cap | Ascent cap | Walks | With buses | Fells reached | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 km | 600 m | 82 | 80 | 116 −98 | proven |
| 10 km | 900 m | 98 | 97 | 173 −41 | proven |
| 10 km | 1200 m | 93 | 92 | 180 −34 | proven |
| 10 km | 1500 m | 93 | 92 | 180 −34 | proven |
| 15 km | 600 m | 85 | 83 | 121 −93 | proven |
| 15 km | 900 m | 85 | 85 | 195 −19 | proven |
| 15 km | 1200 m | 65 | 64 | 212 −2 | proven |
| 15 km | 1500 m | 59 | 58 | 212 −2 | proven |
| 20 km | 600 m | 85 | 83 | 121 −93 | proven |
| 20 km | 900 m | 86 | 86 | 199 −15 | proven |
| 20 km | 1200 m | 54 | 52 | 214 | proven |
| 20 km | 1500 m | 40 | 40 | 214 | proven |
| 25 km | 600 m | 85 | 83 | 121 −93 | proven |
| 25 km | 900 m | 86 | 86 | 199 −15 | proven |
| 25 km | 1200 m | 53 | 51 | 214 | proven |
| 25 km | 1500 m | 39 | 37 | 214 | best found |
Rows in grey do not reach all 214; their walk count is not comparable with the rest. “Proven” means the solver also produced a matching lower bound.
Are they walks anyone would actually choose? Partly. In a blind sample of 92 of these computed days, the author would not recommend about 35% of them as they stand — usually because the day is simply large, which is what a generous cap buys, or because the start point is a long way from the first summit. That does not change the count: the minimum is a property of the caps and the map, not of how pleasant the resulting day is. It is the difference between how few are possible and which ones to walk, and only the first question is answered here.
What a person did, for comparison
Stuart Marshall's Walking the Wainwrights (2000) sets out a round of the 214 in 36 circular walks — and he walked them. This page did not. A solver proposing 39 lines is not a better answer than his 36: his day sizes are his own, ours are caps we chose, and a smaller number bought with bigger days is not an achievement. His book is the reason to treat the numbers here as arithmetic rather than advice.
How it was worked out
- Start points are pinned. 217 places to leave a car, every one verified by a person — not the full parking dataset. 826 further entries exist but have not been looked at individually, and a published number should not move because an unrelated dataset grew overnight.
- Distances are walked, not straight-line. Every leg is measured over the same walking graph the rest of the site uses, with ascent from the elevation model.
- The caps are the model. A “walk” is a there-and-back day within both caps; the solver minimises how many are needed to cover the 214.
- The count is a proof, not a recommendation. It says no smaller number of days can cover the 214 within those caps. It does not say these are the days to walk.
- Nobody has walked these lines. They are a proof that a number is achievable, not a set of recommended days, and there are no downloads here for that reason. For walks we have walked, use the route guides.
- The bus figure is geometry, not a plan. It says a linear walk would save this much; it says nothing about catching a bus at the end of a long day, and we hold no timetable that could.
Solved 2026-08-11 · 32 scenarios · data: index.json