Great Bank
Great Bank at 329m (1,079ft) is a Birkett top on the fell above the south shore of Ennerdale, its moorland summit giving views across the valley to the high Ennerdale fells.
Is it worth going? — Today’s conditions & 7-day summit forecast
Modelled guidance for the 329 m summit. Always check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.
On the summit today (Fri 11 Sep): 14° to 10°C, gusts to 23 mph, 1.0 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 329 m summit altitude via Open-Meteo. Summit conditions are always harsher than the valley — check the professional mountain forecasts before you go.
Great Bank at a glance
Getting there
Classifications & hill data
The short answers
Is Great Bank a Wainwright?
Great Bank is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list and the Synge list.
Where do you park for Great Bank?
The nearest car park we hold is Great Bank (layby), about 0.8 km from the summit in a straight line. The next is Great Bank car park, 1.7 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 Great Bank
No route guide for this fell yet. The nearest routes we publish start close by:
- Whin Rigg, Illgill Head & the Wastwater Screes — starts 2.4 km away
- Boat How, Great Bank & Wainwrights — starts 3.2 km away
- Middle Fell, Haycock Seatallan and Buckbarrow — starts 3.7 km away
Parking & buses for Great Bank
Best parking to hike Great Bank
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 Great Bank by bus
The nearest bus stop we hold is the 77 at Honister Youth Hostel (near), 16.3 km of walking from the start — not realistically reachable without a car. It is a seasonal service too: 1 November 2026 is its last day of the year (confirmed with the operator, 29 August 2026).
Rural routes change seasonally — confirm on stagecoachbus.com (opens in new tab) or Traveline before relying on a last bus.
Hazards on Great Bank
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: Great Bank (layby), about 0.8 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.
Birketts near Great Bank (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 Great Bank
Terrain & access
A near-path top (about 329 m): a mapped path comes within about 147 m of the summit, with a last stretch of open ground (about 23 m of ascent, up to ~32°). There is steep ground (over 30°) on the direct line — pick your line with care. The summit is on CRoW open access land. The direct line crosses 2 walls, 1 gate.
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 Great Bank
Access: summit and direct approach lie within mapped open-access land (CRoW). The usual access-land conditions apply.
Walls & fences: the approach crosses a wall. No stile or gate is mapped within 150 m of the crossing — that’s a statement about the map, not the wall, which may well have one. Expect to walk the wall to find a crossing rather than climbing it: dry-stone walls are working boundaries and take real damage from climbers.
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 Great Bank
- 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)