Great How - Eskdale Fell
At 522 m (1,713 ft), Great How - Eskdale Fell is a Birkett (one of the 541 tops in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells) in the Western Fells — an overlooked summit away from the crowds.
Is it worth going? — Today’s conditions & 7-day summit forecast
Modelled guidance for the 522 m summit. Always check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.
On the summit today (Tue 28 Jul): 15° to 14°C, gusts to 31 mph, 5.9 mm of rain forecast.
Forecast snapshot from 28 Jul 2026, 04:58 UTC — refreshed nightly and updated live in your browser. Temperatures and gusts adjusted to the 522 m summit altitude via Open-Meteo. Summit conditions are always harsher than the valley — check the professional mountain forecasts before you go.
About the walk
Map & nearby Birketts
Skip mapFree mapping: OpenTopoMap / OpenStreetMap (switch layers top-right). Parking positions are approximate.
Nearest parking: Wasdale Head (NT car park), about 3.1 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.
Birketts near Great How - Eskdale Fell (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.
Terrain & access
A pathless top (about 522 m) — the nearest mapped path is about 626 m away, the open ground you’d cross to the summit (about 40 m of ascent, up to ~23°). The summit is on CRoW open access land.
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 145 fells.
Best parking to hike Great How - Eskdale 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.
Buses to Great How - Eskdale Fell from Penrith / Ambleside / Windermere
No regular bus serves the start points for this fell — this is one for the car (or a long approach from the nearest served valley). The nearest hubs are Penrith (X4/X5 & 508), Ambleside and Windermere (555, 505, 516).
Rural routes change seasonally — confirm on stagecoachbus.com (opens in new tab) or Traveline before relying on a last bus.
Other fells near Great How - Eskdale Fell
- Base Brown
- Blake Fell
- Brandreth
- Buckbarrow
- Burnbank Fell
- Caw Fell
- Crag Fell
- Fellbarrow - Mosser Fell
- Fleetwith Pike
- Gavel Fell
- Great Borne
- Great Gable
- Green Gable
- Grey Knotts
- Grike
- Haycock
- Haystacks (Buttermere)
- Hen Comb
- High Crag (Buttermere)
- High Stile
- Kirk Fell
- Lank Rigg
- Low Fell
- Mellbreak (Mellbreak South Top)
- Middle Fell
- Pillar
- Red Pike (Buttermere)
- Red Pike (Wasdale)
- Scoat Fell (Little Scoat Fell)
- Seatallan
- Starling Dodd
- Steeple
- Yewbarrow
Maps & guidebooks for Great How - Eskdale Fell
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