Burthwaite Heights
Burthwaite Heights at 318m (1,043ft) is a Birkett top above the Bassenthwaite valley on the western flanks of the Skiddaw massif, its open summit giving views across Bassenthwaite Lake and towards the Solway Firth.
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 (Fri 11 Sep): 14° to 11°C, gusts to 25 mph, 3.3 mm of rain forecast.
Forecast snapshot from 11 Sep 2026, 08:30 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.
Burthwaite Heights at a glance
Getting there
Classifications & hill data
The short answers
Is Burthwaite Heights a Wainwright?
Burthwaite Heights is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list and the Synge list.
Where do you park for Burthwaite Heights?
The nearest car park we hold is Burthwaite Heights (layby), about 0.5 km from the summit in a straight line. The next is Roadside parking for Ling Fell (free), 1.0 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 Burthwaite Heights
No route guide for this fell yet. The nearest routes we publish start close by:
- Ling Fell & Sale Fell — starts 1.0 km away
- Rivings and Lothwaite — starts 1.1 km away
- Kirk Fell and Broom Fell — starts 2.8 km away
Parking & buses for Burthwaite Heights
Best parking to hike Burthwaite Heights
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 Burthwaite Heights by bus
The X4 stops at Dubwath turn (near), 3.8 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 22:35 towards Workington (X5); Saturday 00:30 (+1) (after midnight) towards Workington (X5); Sunday 20:27 towards Workington (X5). 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 Burthwaite Heights
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: Burthwaite Heights (layby), about 0.5 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.
Birketts near Burthwaite Heights (within 3 km)
These Birkett tops are not Wainwright summits — detour to them on this walk and they are pure profit. Distances are straight-line; allow extra for terrain.
On the hill: terrain and water on Burthwaite Heights
Terrain & access
A pathless top (about 318 m) — the nearest mapped path is about 320 m away, the open ground you’d cross to the summit (about 29 m of ascent, up to ~21°). 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. The direct line crosses 1 wall.
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 Burthwaite Heights
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 Burthwaite Heights
- Ard Crags
- Barf
- Barrow
- Broom Fell
- Castle Crag
- Cat Bells (Catbells)
- Causey Pike
- Crag Hill (Eel Crag)
- Dale Head
- Grasmoor
- Graystones (Graystones North Top)
- Grisedale Pike
- High Spy
- Hindscarth
- Hopegill Head
- Knott Rigg
- Ling Fell
- Lord's Seat
- Maiden Moor
- Outerside
- Rannerdale Knotts
- Robinson
- Sail
- Sale Fell
- Scar Crags
- Wandope
- Whinlatter (Brown How)
- Whiteless Pike
- Whiteside (Whiteside West Top)