Low Wythow
Low Wythow is a Birkett (one of the 541 tops in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells) in the Southern Fells. Its nearest tops are High Wythow (0.3 km SW); Long Crag - Yewdale Fells (0.6 km WSW); Brackeny Crag (0.6 km N).
Summit conditions on Low Wythow
On the summit on Tuesday 27 October: 13° to 6°C, gusts to 51 mph, 4.3 mm of rain forecast over the whole day, midnight to midnight.
The forecast figures are Open-Meteo’s, worked out for the summit’s height. How we check →
Routes up Low Wythow
Hand-mapped, with GPX to download — full maps further down.
Three Birketts on the Yewdale fells north of Coniston — Long Crag, High Wythow and Low Wythow — on a short but steep loop.
Distance and climb are measured from the route’s GPX track, and the time from them by Naismith’s rule; the route page says what each grade rests on. How we check →
How hard is Low Wythow?
The shortest way up we hold is North of Coniston Birketts — 7.96 km, 494 m of ascent, ~2¼–3¼ h. On our scale its hardest axes are steepness and navigation — Hard.
All axes: steepness: Hard · navigation: Hard · length: Easy · terrain: Not assessed · exposure: Not assessed.
These are the route page’s grades, set by the rules on how we grade: length and steepness measured from its GPX track, the others set on the ground, judged from the map or estimated from OpenStreetMap. The route page says which. How we check →
Conditions and 7-day summit forecast
Modelled for the 372 m summit (Open-Meteo). Check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.
Full 7-day forecast
Taken 27 October 2026, 08:13 UTC; the live forecast replaces it when it loads. Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (opens in new tab)
Parking & buses for Low Wythow
Parking
Route starts first, then the car parks nearest the summit, which are not always a way up.
3 more places to park near Low Wythow
Positions are approximate.
Of the pay-and-display machine tickets sold from 17 August 2024 to 31 March 2026, 33% at Coniston Old Station and 10% at Ruskin Avenue were bought before 10am (our count of FOI/2026.500 ticket data). Contains public sector information provided by the Lake District National Park Authority and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Vehicles are left at their owner’s risk: we list places people park and cannot vouch for any of them. Take valuables with you and leave nothing on show.
Buses
The 505 stops at Coniston, outside The Ruskin Centre, a 500 m walk and 39 m of ascent from the start of North of Coniston Birketts — a route we rate Hard overall (hardest: steepness and navigation). As timetabled from 27 October to 1 November. Towards Kendal (505): Tuesday to Sunday 20:24. Checked against the operator’s timetable, 12 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.
Getting there across the Lake District: Buses · Parking map · By train · By boat
Hazards on Low Wythow
Notes from the North of Coniston Birketts route
- 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 descent of around 34% over 250 m); crag/exposure data is unverified from the mapping, so take care on the steeper ground.
If you need to get off (the leg from High Wythow): Return south to High Wythow and subsequently Long Crag to utilize the most logical descent route.
Quoted from the route page: its warnings and the note for the leg that reaches Low Wythow.
We have not written a hazard card for this fell yet, and that is not a sign that it is low-hazard. Read the warnings on the route pages that climb it, check the forecast, carry a map and compass, and turn back in cloud if the ground is not what you expected. The National Park Authority’s What to pack page, AdventureSmart’s hill walking kit list and Mountain Rescue England and Wales’s safety page are linked from our what to carry guide.
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. In Environment Agency samples taken near our route North of Coniston Birketts between 2009 and 2024, no sample put lead or cadmium, the metals that matter for people, above the drinking limit. That is a record of past sampling, not a test of the water today. Treat any hill water before drinking (an ordinary hiking 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).
If you need Mountain Rescue
Dial 999 or 112 and ask for the Police, then Mountain Rescue.
Before you call, have ready: where you are (a grid reference if you can – the OS Locate app shows yours on your phone), what has happened, how many of you there are, and your mobile number.
Then stay where you are until the rescue team contacts you.
If you cannot make a voice call because of a hearing or speech impairment, emergency SMS works only if you have registered first: text “register” to 999.
From Mountain Rescue England and Wales’s guidance on calling them out (opens in new tab) (read 26 October 2026).
Map, GPX and nearby Birketts
Skip mapFree mapping: OpenTopoMap / OpenStreetMap, with SRTM elevation data (switch layers top-right).
Parking, toilets and buses: Parking & buses ↑.
Birketts within 3 km of Low Wythow
These Birkett tops are not Wainwright summits. Distances are straight lines: check the ground and access on a map before adding one.
Routes over Low Wythow
Download GPX Walked in part, August 2024 · km 2.2–5.5 from the map
Every line here is a guide, not a guarantee — conditions change. Navigate for yourself and carry a map and compass. How to use this guide.
On the hill: terrain and water on Low Wythow
Terrain & access
A near-path top (about 372 m): a mapped path comes within about 179 m of the summit. We have not checked a way from it to the top: the figures here are measured along a straight line on a terrain model, not a route. That line climbs about 58 m. Parts of it are steeper than 30°. 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 v18.4 (CC BY 4.0); Copernicus GLO-30. CRoW access layer: © Natural England copyright. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. See the terrain & access report for how this is worked out across all 144 fells.
Water & shelter on the way up
On the North of Coniston Birketts route:
On-route facilities © OpenStreetMap contributors, per route — an absent marker doesn’t mean none.
About Low Wythow
Classifications & hill data
Is Low Wythow a Wainwright?
Low Wythow is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list.
Selected lists
This is the summit’s grid reference. If you call from anywhere else, give your own position, not this one.
Lists, height and summit position from the Database of British and Irish Hills; the feet are converted from its metres and the grid reference from that position. How we check →
Places to stay near this fell
- Bank Ground Farm (opens in new tab) guest houseabout 1.6 km
We have not stayed at any of them. We take no bookings or affiliate fees. Distances are straight lines from each route start, never walking times. Properties found via OpenStreetMap (opens in new tab).