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

Birkett — North Western (not a Wainwright summit)Birkett top

Red Knott

Red Knott at 452m (1,483ft) is a Birkett top on the Whiteside ridge in the North Western Fells above the Gasgale Gill, giving views across the Coledale valley and towards Grasmoor.

452 m
Height
+4
Bonus Birketts
See routes & download GPX → Parking & buses →

Home › Fells › Red Knott

452 mBirkett — North Western (not a Wainwright summit)+4 bonus Birketts within 3 km

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

Modelled guidance for the 452 m summit. Always check the Met Office mountain forecast and MWIS before you set off.

On the summit today (Fri 11 Sep): 12° to 10°C, gusts to 33 mph, 2.8 mm of rain forecast.

Fri 11 Sep
🌧️
12° / 10°
💨 33 mph
🌧 2.8 mm (100%)
Sat 12 Sep
🌧️
15° / 10°
💨 49 mph
🌧 25.2 mm (100%)
Sun 13 Sep
🌦️
13° / 8°
💨 21 mph
🌧 0.1 mm (74%)
Mon 14 Sep
🌧️
15° / 8°
💨 33 mph
🌧 12.7 mm (96%)
Tue 15 Sep
🌦️
14° / 9°
💨 32 mph
🌧 13.2 mm (100%)
Wed 16 Sep
🌦️
11° / 9°
💨 33 mph
🌧 5.4 mm (96%)
Thu 17 Sep
🌦️
11° / 9°
💨 37 mph
🌧 8.8 mm (98%)

Forecast snapshot from 11 Sep 2026, 08:30 UTC — refreshed nightly and updated live in your browser. Temperatures and gusts adjusted to the 452 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

Red Knott at a glance

Red Knott

Red Knott at 452m (1,483ft) is a Birkett top on the Whiteside ridge in the North Western Fells above the Gasgale Gill, giving views across the Coledale valley and towards Grasmoor. Part of the Coledale Horseshoe group. A fine viewpoint above one of the most spectacular side valleys in the district.

Routes up Red Knott

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

Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little Town
12.1 km · ~3.6 hr · Moderate
A proper Newlands mountain day that most walkers drive straight past. The shapely Scope End ridge lifts you out of Little Town onto Hindscarth, then an airy walk along Hindscarth Edge carries you over to Dale Head above the head of the valley before a long descent back to the start. It's about 12 km with 730 m of ascent, with no scrambling — but the pulls are steep and the tops are big and open. Walk it on a day the Catbells car parks are overflowing and you'll have the ridge largely to yourself.

Classifications & hill data

Birkett
452 m
Height
1,483 ft
In feet
NY 2210 1796
Grid ref

The short answers

Is Red Knott a Wainwright?

Red Knott is not a Wainwright. It is on the Birkett list.

Where do you park for Red Knott?

The nearest car park we hold is Causey Pike (layby), about 1.6 km from the summit in a straight line. The next is Ard Crags (layby), 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.

How hard is Red Knott?

The shortest way up we hold is Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little Town — 12.1 km, 729 m of ascent, about 3.6 hours. On our scale its hardest axis is steepness — Severe.

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

Parking & buses for Red Knott

Best parking to hike Red Knott

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

Causey Pike (layby) — 1.6 km from summit (straight line)
Nearest fells: Causey Pike (1.3 km), Scope End (1.3 km), Rowling End (1.4 km). Free (OSM-tagged).
Directions Something changed here?
Ard Crags (layby) — 1.7 km from summit (straight line)
Nearest fells: Ard Crags (0.8 km), Scar Crags (1.3 km), Causey Pike (1.4 km). Free (OSM-tagged).
Directions Something changed here?
Little Town, Newlands (paid, small) — 1.8 km from summit (straight line)
Newlands valley — Catbells, Maiden Moor, Hindscarth, Robinson.
Directions Something changed here?
Knott Rigg (layby) — 1.8 km from summit (straight line)
Nearest fells: Knott Rigg (0.8 km), Ill Crag (Newlands) (Knott Rigg North Top) (0.8 km), Ard Crags (1.3 km). Free (OSM-tagged).
Directions Something changed here?
Rowling End, south (layby) — 1.8 km from summit (straight line)
Walking base for Scope End, Red Knott, High Crags (Newlands) and Hindscarth — the 'Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little Town' route starts 108 m away. Unpaved surface (OSM-tagged). Fee not verified — check signage on arrival.
Directions 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 Red Knott by bus

The 77 stops at Manesty, outside Cocklety How. From there it is 2.7 km and 301 m of ascent to the start of Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little Town — a route we rate Moderate — a walk in before the walk. Seasonal: the 77 does not run all year. 1 November 2026 is its last day, and it is not daily before then — a bus on 31 of the 56 days from 7 September. We don’t know when it returns. Confirmed with the operator, 29 August 2026. The last bus is 18:54 towards Keswick (77), 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 77 / 77A “Honister Rambler”
Keswick – Portinscale – Hawse End (Catbells) – Grange – Seatoller – Honister Pass – Buttermere – Lorton – Whinlatter – Keswick (circular)
Catch it from: Keswick (connect via 555 from Windermere/Ambleside or X4/X5 from Penrith)
Seasonal (roughly Easter–October). Brilliant for the North Western fells: Catbells, Dale Head from Honister, the Buttermere fells and Whinlatter.

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

Hazards on Red Knott

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 Newlands Beck

Newlands Beck runs below the old Goldscope mine and carries mine-derived 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: Causey Pike (layby), about 1.6 km from the summit (straight line). Full parking, toilets and bus details are below.

Birketts near Red Knott (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.

0.5 km NEScope End412 m · North Western
0.6 km SWHigh Crags (Newlands)529 m · North Western
2.4 km WNWIll Crag (Newlands) (Knott Rigg North Top)546 m · North Western
2.9 km NNERowling End433 m · North Western

Routes over Red Knott

Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little TownPlanned
12.08 km · ~729 m ascent · loop · ~3.5–5 h · Anticlockwise — up Scope End, over Hindscarth to Dale Head, then down into Newlands. · Moderate
Summits: Scope EndRed KnottHigh Crags (Newlands)HindscarthDale Head

✎️ Little Town sits right under Catbells, so Newlands catches the overspill from the honeypot next door — but almost everyone stops at Catbells. Start up Scope End instead and the crowds thin out within ten minutes. Roadside parking in Newlands is very limited, so arrive early or you'll end up driving back out.

⬇️ Download GPX

Best season: All year for confident hillwalkers. The steep grass of Scope End and the descent off Dale Head turn greasy after rain and are genuinely treacherous under frost or snow — in winter conditions treat this as a route needing an ice axe, crampons and the skill to use them.

⚠️ Warnings: The climb onto Dale Head is sustained and steep (around 43% at its worst) — pace it, and expect hard, slow going in the wet. Scope End's nose and the long descent off Dale Head are steep grass and scree: slippery after rain and hazardous in frost or snow. Hindscarth and Dale Head are broad, grassy, near-featureless tops — in cloud, take a compass bearing off each summit before setting off. Dale Head drops away in crags on its Newlands (north) face; in poor visibility be sure you've picked up the correct descent line and don't drift onto the steep 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. How to use this guide.

On the hill: terrain and water on Red Knott

Water & shelter on the way up

On the Scope End, Hindscarth & Dale Head from Little Town route:

🛖 map (6 m)

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

Places to stay near this fell

Braeside self-catering

about 4.5 km from the start, in a straight line

The best-evidenced dog record in the radius - not just "dog friendly" but the number allowed, the exact charge, and dog towels provided - paired with the tumble dryer that decides whether a wet walking party is comfortable that evening. Bike storage and a tearoom downstairs run by the same owners make it a self-contained base for a group of six. Its silence on children is recorded as silence, not as a no.

There is a set of Wainwright's guides on the stairs for guests to borrow, dog towels in the utility room for the end of a walk, and a tearoom directly downstairs run by the owners.

  • Dogs “2 dogs allowed. Dogs are charged at £20 each per full or part week”
  • Parking “Parking for one car in front of cottage, further free parking available on roadside subject to availbility”

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.

Other fells near Red Knott