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410 m · Birkett — Southern (not a Wainwright summit) · Birketts to bag nearby, parking, buses, my hikes and live summit weather.

Birkett — Southern (not a Wainwright summit)Birkett top

High Wythow

High Wythow (410 m / 1,345 ft) is a Birkett (one of the 541 tops in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells), one of the lesser-known Southern tops.

410 m
Height
+11
Bonus Birketts
See routes & download GPX →

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410 mBirkett — Southern (not a Wainwright summit)+11 bonus Birketts within 3 km

Is it worth going? — Today’s conditions & 7-day summit forecast

Modelled guidance for the 410 m summit. Always check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.

On the summit today (Tue 28 Jul): 16° to 15°C, gusts to 36 mph, 4.9 mm of rain forecast.

Tue 28 Jul
🌦️
16° / 15°
💨 36 mph
🌧 4.9 mm (100%)
Wed 29 Jul
🌦️
16° / 13°
💨 29 mph
🌧 2.5 mm (100%)
Thu 30 Jul
🌦️
14° / 8°
💨 28 mph
🌧 1.2 mm (78%)
Fri 31 Jul
🌤️
16° / 3°
💨 23 mph
🌧 0.0 mm (78%)
Sat 1 Aug
🌦️
16° / 4°
💨 15 mph
🌧 2.1 mm (54%)
Sun 2 Aug
☁️
18° / 8°
💨 18 mph
🌧 0.0 mm (24%)
Mon 3 Aug
🌦️
18° / 8°
💨 12 mph
🌧 0.2 mm (23%)

Forecast snapshot from 28 Jul 2026, 04:58 UTC — refreshed nightly and updated live in your browser. Temperatures and gusts adjusted to the 410 m summit altitude via Open-Meteo. Summit conditions are always harsher than the valley — check the professional mountain forecasts before you go.

Pro mountain forecasts: MWIS · Met Office mountain forecast

About the walk

Key information

High Wythow

High Wythow (410 m / 1,345 ft) is a Birkett (one of the 541 tops in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells), one of the lesser-known Southern tops. It rises the Yewdale. The name comes from high (Old English heah, the higher of two tops). Its nearest tops are Long Crag - Yewdale Fells (0.2 km W); Low Wythow (0.3 km NE); Kitty Crag (0.5 km W) — it's usually taken in on a round of these neighbours. It's a worthwhile objective for anyone working through the Birkett list, or as a short extension to a bigger day on the higher neighbouring fells.

Routes up High Wythow

Hand-mapped, with GPX to download — full maps further down.

North of Coniston Birketts
7.7 km · ~2.3 hr · Moderate
Three quiet Birketts on the Yewdale fells north of Coniston — Long Crag, High Wythow and Low Wythow — on a short but steep loop that most walkers pass over for the Old Man across the valley. Moderate for the legs, harder for the map: faint paths and a clear-day-only navigation challenge, rewarded with rarely-trodden tops and a fine view over Coniston Water.
Classifications & hill data
Birkett
410 m
Height
1,345 ft
In feet
SD 3003 9902
Grid ref

Map & nearby Birketts

Free mapping: OpenTopoMap / OpenStreetMap (switch layers top-right). Parking positions are approximate.

Nearest parking: Coniston village (paid), about 1.4 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.

Birketts near High Wythow (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.

0.2 km WSWLong Crag - Yewdale Fells421 m · Southern
0.3 km NELow Wythow372 m · Southern
0.5 km WKitty Crag435 m · Southern
0.8 km NNEBrackeny Crag364 m · Southern
2.1 km NBlake Rigg (Tilberthwaite)423 m · Southern
2.4 km NHaystacks (Tilberthwaite)423 m · Southern
2.5 km NWBlack Sails745 m · Southern
2.5 km NHawk Rigg441 m · Southern
2.7 km NHigh Fell (Hawk Rigg)428 m · Southern
2.7 km NNWBirk Fell Man - Birk Fell528 m · Southern
2.9 km WNWGreat How (Swirl Band)775 m · Southern

Routes over High Wythow

North of Coniston BirkettsPlanned
7.73 km · ~458 m ascent · loop · ~2–3 h · Moderate
Summits: Long Crag - Yewdale FellsHigh WythowLow Wythow

⬇️ Download GPX

Best season: Any season, but save it for a clear day — the featureless ground between the tops is hard to read in low cloud.

⚠️ Warnings: Navigation is the real challenge on this loop, not the climbing. The paths around High Wythow and Low Wythow are faint and intermittent — most walkers are drawn across the valley to Coniston and the Old Man, so these Yewdale tops see little traffic and the trods fade into rough ground.; Attempt this only on a clear day, and treat it as one for moderately experienced hikers confident navigating with map and compass. About a fifth of the high ground is featureless, and in low cloud the line would be easy to lose.; Steep in places (a sustained pull of around 34%); crag/exposure data is unverified from the mapping, so take care choosing your line on the steeper ground.

Full route guide ↗

✎️ Planned route — drawn but not personally walked or checked yet.

A planned line is a suggestion, not a guarantee — conditions change. Navigate independently and carry a map & compass.

Terrain & access

A near-path top (about 410 m): a mapped path comes within about 184 m of the summit, with a last stretch of open ground (about 5 m of ascent, up to ~16°). 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 High Wythow

Where we have the data, each parking spot also shows the nearest public toilets and facilities (cafés, pubs, shops).

Coniston village (paid) — 1.4 km from summit (straight line)
Main village car parks — full Coniston round.
Directions
🚺 Coniston Bridge (50m)🚺 Coniston Ruskin Avenue Car Park (121m)☕ Sara's Indian☕ The Green Housekeeper☕ Steam Bistro🍺 The Yewdale Inn🍺 Crown Inn🍺 Sun Hotel Pub🏪 Coniston Gifts & Sports
Tilberthwaite (free) — 2.0 km from summit (straight line)
Quarry car park for Wetherlam and the Tilberthwaite fells.
Directions

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.

Water & shelter on the way up

On the North of Coniston Birketts route:

🚌 The Ruskin Centre (329 m)🚌 John Ruskin School (W bound) (333 m)🚌 The Crown Inn (353 m)🚌 The Crown Hotel (366 m)

On-route facilities © OpenStreetMap contributors, per route — an absent marker doesn’t mean none.

Buses to High Wythow from Penrith / Ambleside / Windermere

Stagecoach 505 “Coniston Rambler”
Windermere – Ambleside – Skelwith Bridge – Hawkshead – Coniston
Catch it from: Windermere · Ambleside
Daily in season (reduced winter service). Best access for the Coniston fells (Old Man, Wetherlam group).

Rural routes change seasonally — confirm on stagecoachbus.com or Traveline before relying on a last bus.

A note on Church Beck (with Red Dell Beck & Levers Water)

Church Beck (with Red Dell Beck & Levers Water) runs below the old Coniston copper mines and carries mine-derived copper and zinc — enough to matter for river life, though the lead and cadmium that would harm a person stay below the drinking limit here. Treat any hill water before drinking (a filter won’t remove dissolved metals); don’t single this beck out as a clean fill-up.

What’s actually in this beck — we mapped every mine-fed one →

Metal-mine water data © Environment Agency (Open Government Licence v3.0).

Other fells near High Wythow

Maps & guidebooks for High Wythow

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