Birch Fell
Birch Fell at 318m (1,043ft) is a quiet Birkett summit above the Rusland Valley and Esthwaite Water in the South Lakeland lowlands, its heathery top giving pleasant views across the wooded valley.
Is it worth going? — Today’s conditions & 7-day summit forecast
Modelled guidance for the 318 m summit. Always check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.
On the summit today (Sat 12 Sep): 17° to 8°C, gusts to 35 mph, 17.9 mm of rain forecast.
Forecast snapshot from 12 Sep 2026, 18:50 UTC — refreshed nightly and updated live in your browser. Temperatures and gusts adjusted to the 318 m summit altitude via Open-Meteo. Summit conditions are always harsher than the valley — check the professional mountain forecasts before you go.
Birch Fell at a glance
Getting there
Classifications & hill data
The short answers
Is Birch Fell a Wainwright?
Birch Fell is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list and the Synge list.
Where do you park for Birch Fell?
The nearest car park we hold is Birch Fell car park, about 0.8 km from the summit in a straight line. The next is Gummer's How car park (free), 1.6 km out. We only look within 2.5 km, measured straight-line: over longer distances a road may cross a pass and the drive bears no relation to the line.
Routes up Birch Fell
No route guide for this fell yet. The nearest routes we publish start close by:
- Gummer's How & Birch Fell — starts 1.6 km away
Parking & buses for Birch Fell
Best parking to hike Birch Fell
Where we have the data, each parking spot also shows the nearest public toilets and facilities (cafés, pubs, shops).
Positions are approximate — zoom the map to confirm. Lakeland car parks fill before 9am on fine weekends.
Tip: pan and zoom the interactive map at the top of this page to spot other potential parking near your route.
Vehicles are left entirely at their owner’s risk. We list places people park; we cannot vouch for any of them. Judge it on the day: take valuables with you, leave nothing on show, and if a spot feels wrong when you get there, park somewhere else.
Getting to Birch Fell by bus
The 6 stops at Fell Foot, at Gummers How, 3.1 km from the nearest parking for this fell. We haven’t mapped a route up it, so we can’t tell you the walk from there to the start. Last bus: Monday to Friday 23:36 towards Ulverston (6); Saturday 23:36 towards Ulverston (6); Sunday 23:38 towards Ulverston (6). Checked against the operator’s timetable, 7 September 2026. Times here are a guide, not a promise — leave yourself more than the minute.
Rural routes change seasonally — confirm on stagecoachbus.com (opens in new tab) or Traveline before relying on a last bus.
Hazards on Birch Fell
No hazard card for this fell. The usual open-fell rules apply: check the forecast, carry a map and compass, and turn back in cloud if the ground is not what you expected.
Map & nearby Birketts
Skip mapFree mapping: OpenTopoMap / OpenStreetMap (switch layers top-right). Parking positions are approximate.
Nearest parking: Birch Fell car park, about 0.8 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.
Birketts near Birch Fell (within 3 km)
No bonus Birketts within 3 km — every Birkett near here is already a Wainwright summit, so just enjoy the walk.
On the hill: terrain and water on Birch Fell
Terrain & access
A near-path top (about 318 m): a mapped path comes within about 223 m of the summit, with a last stretch of open ground (about 30 m of ascent, up to ~23°). The summit is not on CRoW open access land, and the direct approach crosses land that is neither access land nor a right of way — there may be no public right to the top, so check access before you go.
Computed from open data, not walked — pathless ground needs confident navigation, and mapped paths, barriers and access boundaries can be incomplete. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors (via Overpass); Natural England CRoW Access Land; DoBIH; Copernicus GLO-30. See the terrain & access report for how this is worked out across all 144 fells.
Access on Birch Fell
Access: the open datasets show no access land and no recorded right of way reaching this summit. That describes the mapping, not necessarily the ground — permissive arrangements often go unmapped — but we don’t publish approach detail for fells where we can’t point to a public right or a landowner’s invitation. If you know of an access arrangement for this fell, we’d genuinely like to hear about it.
Local restrictions can close open-access areas temporarily — check the official open-access information (opens in new tab) before travelling.
How we worked this out
Summit and approach positions are tested against Natural England’s CRoW Act 2000 access layer; rights of way and wall or fence detail come from OpenStreetMap. Both are open datasets with known gaps — in our own survey only 4 of 23 wall and fence crossings had a stile or gate mapped within 150 m — so absence of a mapped feature never means absence of a real one. Nothing here is field-verified unless marked, and none of it is legal advice. How we checked 378 fells.
Other fells near Birch Fell
- Allen Crags
- Black Fell
- Bowfell
- Brim Fell
- Cold Pike
- Crinkle Crags - Long Top (Second Crinkle)
- Dow Crag
- Esk Pike
- Glaramara
- Great Carrs
- Great End
- Green Crag
- Grey Friar
- Hard Knott
- Harter Fell (Eskdale)
- Holme Fell
- Illgill Head
- Lingmell
- Lingmoor Fell (Brown How)
- Pike of Blisco
- Rossett Pike
- Rosthwaite Fell - Bessyboot
- Scafell
- Scafell Pike
- Seathwaite Fell (Wainwright summit)
- Slight Side
- Swirl How
- The Old Man of Coniston (Coniston Old Man)
- Wetherlam
- Whin Rigg (Wasdale)