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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 → Parking & buses →
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 (Fri 11 Sep): 13° to 10°C, gusts to 32 mph, 2.0 mm of rain forecast.

Fri 11 Sep
🌦️
13° / 10°
💨 32 mph
🌧 2.0 mm (100%)
Sat 12 Sep
🌧️
15° / 11°
💨 45 mph
🌧 43.6 mm (100%)
Sun 13 Sep
🌦️
14° / 8°
💨 22 mph
🌧 0.1 mm (62%)
Mon 14 Sep
🌧️
15° / 7°
💨 29 mph
🌧 15.5 mm (100%)
Tue 15 Sep
🌦️
15° / 9°
💨 34 mph
🌧 5.8 mm (89%)
Wed 16 Sep
🌦️
12° / 10°
💨 29 mph
🌧 2.8 mm (78%)
Thu 17 Sep
🌦️
12° / 9°
💨 36 mph
🌧 6.4 mm (92%)

Forecast snapshot from 11 Sep 2026, 08:30 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.

High Wythow at a glance

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.

Classifications & hill data

Birkett
410 m
Height
1,345 ft
In feet
SD 3003 9902
Grid ref

The short answers

Is High Wythow a Wainwright?

High Wythow is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list.

Where do you park for High Wythow?

The nearest car park we hold is Coniston, Bluebird Car & Coach Park (paid), about 1.2 km from the summit in a straight line. The next is High Wythow, south-east car park (paid), 1.3 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.

How hard is High Wythow?

The shortest way up we hold is North of Coniston Birketts — 7.7 km, 458 m of ascent, about 2.3 hours. On our scale its hardest axis is steepness — Hard.

All axes: steepness: Hard · navigation: Hard · exposure: Moderate · terrain: Moderate · length: Easy.

Parking & buses for High Wythow

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, Bluebird Car & Coach Park (paid) — 1.2 km from summit (straight line)
North end of the village, the larger of the two.
Directions (opens in new tab)Something changed here?
High Wythow, south-east car park (paid) — 1.3 km from summit (straight line)
The 'The Sun Pub Walk (Coniston)' route starts 326 m away. Paid parking (OSM-tagged). Unpaved surface (OSM-tagged).
Directions (opens in new tab)Something changed here?
Coniston, Ruskin Avenue (paid) — 1.5 km from summit (straight line)
Village car park — the full Coniston round, Old Man and Wetherlam. Fees: pay and display; cards only.
Directions (opens in new tab)Something changed here?
Coniston Station car park (paid) — 1.6 km from summit (straight line)
On the old station site, west of the village. Fees: pay and display; coins and cards; RingGo ID 37306 (LDNPA, checked Aug 2026).
Directions (opens in new tab)Something changed here?
If it is full: Coniston, Bluebird Car & Coach Park (paid) (0.6 km); Coniston, Ruskin Avenue (paid) (0.6 km); Walna Scar Road, Coniston (paid, rough track) (1.4 km, 143 m up)
Holme Fell, south (layby) — 1.6 km from summit (straight line)
Nearest fells: Holme Fell (0.8 km), Brackeny Crag (1.1 km), Low Wythow (1.3 km). Free (OSM-tagged). Unpaved surface (OSM-tagged).
Directions (opens in new tab)Something changed here?

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 High Wythow by bus

The 505 stops at Coniston, outside The Ruskin Centre, 500 m and 39 m of ascent from the start of North of Coniston Birketts — a route we rate Moderate. The last bus is 20:24 towards Kendal (505) and 18:44 towards Ambleside (505), every day. Checked against the operator’s timetable, 7 September 2026. Times here are a guide, not a promise — leave yourself more than the minute.

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 (opens in new tab) or Traveline before relying on a last bus.

Hazards on High Wythow

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.

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).

Map & nearby Birketts

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

Nearest parking: Coniston, Bluebird Car & Coach Park (paid), about 1.2 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

7.73 km · ~458 m ascent · loop · ~2–3 h · Moderate

⬇️ 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 ↗

🥾 Walked in part — Lee walked this ground in August 2024; km 1.9–4.4 of this line is from the map.

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

On the hill: terrain and water on High Wythow

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 144 fells.

Water & shelter on the way up

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

Places to stay near this fell

Bank Ground Farm (opens in new tab) guest house

about 1.6 km from the start, in a straight line

The one property in the radius that answers the whole family arrival in its own words: cots, high chairs and stair gates on request, a cafe and restaurant on site so nobody gets back in the car, and two real 7kW chargers rather than a USB socket. It also answers honestly against you - check-in is after 4pm and breakfast is at 9am, which is late for a Coniston Old Man round, and the dog sleeps in the kennel block, not the cottage. East shore of Coniston Water, so the 1.57 km is across the lake from the village start.

Worth knowing: “Pets are more than welcome on the farm, we have purpose built five star accommodation so that you can bring the whole family along, however with the exception of assistant dogs, no pets are allowed inside the cottages and farmhouses.”

Arthur Ransome used this farm as the model for the Swallows' farmhouse, and the 1970s film of Swallows and Amazons was shot here.

  • Dogs “Pets are more than welcome on the farm, we have purpose built five star accommodation so that you can bring the whole family along, however with the exception of assistant dogs, no pets are allowed inside the cottages and farmhouses.”
  • Family rooms “The farmhouse has six en-suite bedrooms and offers bed & breakfast accommodation.”
  • Evening meal “Let our fab chefs prepare you lovely meals, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner.”
  • Children “High chairs, cots and stair gates are available on request.”

What each place says about itself, quoted from their own site. We have not stayed at any of them, and there are no prices, no booking and no affiliate links. Distances are straight lines from each route start, never walking times. Properties found via OpenStreetMap (opens in new tab).

Other fells near High Wythow