About this site

How the site began

I set out to walk the Wainwrights in June 2015. At that time, there was some online information about walking in the Lake District but only a few sites dedicated to the 214. I completed the Wainwrights in July 2019 with a visit to Haystacks. Since then, I’ve been taking a more leisurely approach to my second round. At the time of writing, I have just 24 9 to go.

There are now lots of websites about walking the Wainwrights and some that also list the 214 with some of their details. However, there isn’t one site that covers everything I think a Wainwright bagger might need. In particular, there isn’t a site with a focus on helping the Wainwright bagger to find the precise location of each of the Wainwright tops and to easily identify them.

When I began my Wainwright odyssey, I naïvely assumed that locating the Wainwright top of a fell would be straightforward; surely, it’s just about finding the highest point. But Wainwright was not conventional when it comes to choosing a top. In many cases, a fell may have more than one top, each with a cairn, and they may be of similar height or there may be several cairns, one at the highest point and another at the best viewpoint. Or, as at Armboth Fell, Wainwright’s choice of top just seems willfully eccentric. In such cases, how can we know which is the Wainwright top?

The situation is compounded by the fact that Wainwright never intended his guides to be used as a bagging list, he simply chose his favourite fells and described them. Often, each chapter’s summit section is either non-committal or ambiguous, as at Holme Fell. Since Wainwright bagging became a popular pursuit, many authors have tried to interpret the guides to produce a definitive list of Wainwright tops, often without general agreement — Mellbreak is a classic example of where authors disagree on the location of Wainwright’s top.

My early bagging escapades were often confusing, even when referring to the guides. So, I decided to build the site that I wish had existed when I started bagging the Wainwrights. I’ve called the site A Guide to Bagging Wainwright’s Lakeland Fells to keep things simple. The site forms a photographic record of each Wainwright top with precise location information to aid identification in the field, plus suggested viable routes between fells to aid in route planning, along with other useful information. It’s intended as a companion to the Wainwright guides.

Everyone who knows a group of mountains makes his own testament about them in his mind, from the first voyages of exciting discovery, through the long days of storm and sun, strenuous activity, or quiet enjoyment, until he comes to accept them as personal friends.

— W. Heaton Cooper, The Hills of Lakeland, 1938

If you like, you can think of this site as being a testament to my friends.

About me

I’m an educator who’s been teaching in UK higher education for over 30 years and I spent 10 years in professional practice before that. For the last 20 years, I’ve been teaching web technologies and this site, a side project created in my own time, is my playground for experimenting with techniques, new and old.

I’ve always been a keen photographer with a particular interest in landscape photography, so I have kept a good photographic record of all my walks and those photographs are ideal for illustrating this site.

I was born and brought up in the North of England but I’ve spent all of my working life in London. My trips to the Lake District, over the past 10 years or so, have made me nostalgic about my childhood holidays in the Lakes — there’s simply nothing to compare with the landscape of the Lake District National Park in the South of England. I’m now in my 60’s and although I’m slower on the fells than I once was, I’m still keen to get out there and gather more information to include in this site.

About the content

All photographs (with just a few exceptions) were taken by me over the last 10 years or so. All text is researched and written by me, or written from personal experience. All graphic elements are designed and created by me. Technical content is gathered from various open sources, checked and compiled by me. See the Technical details page for more information. None of the content on this site is generated with the aid of AI.

The red backpack that appears in all the summit photographs (here it is at Dollywaggon Pike in 2016) is my trusty Deuter Futura 28. Initially, I photographed it at each summit as proof that I’d been there but when I was putting this site together, it seemed the perfect way to brand the site and that’s why it features in the site logo. I’ve been using it since the end of the 2015 season and the only repair I’ve made is the replacement of the waist strap buckle. Although the red colour is now a little faded, it remains my constant companion on the fells.

About the Wainwrights

There are many classifications of UK hills and mountains, Wikipedia lists over 20 of them, including the Munros, Marilyns and Nuttalls. Some classifications are specific to England and, of those, four are specific to the Lake District. Those four are the Wainwrights, the Fellrangers, the Birketts, and the Synges. This site is intended as a handy reference to the Wainwrights.

The Wainwrights are probably the best known of the Lake District classifications. They are based on the guidebooks of Alfred Wainwright (1907-1991), in which he describes 214 of his favourite hills and mountains. Locally, such hills and mountains are known as “fells” and the activity of climbing them as “fellwalking”. A common objective of keen fellwalkers is to complete a round of all 214 Wainwrights, an activity known as “fell bagging”.

Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells were originally published between 1955 and 1966 in seven volumes, each based on a specific geographical area within the Lake District National Park. This site maps and locates each of Wainwright’s 214 fells and categorises them by the volume in which they appear.

Since their original publication, the guides have been revised twice, once by Chris Jesty, between 2005 and 2009, and most recently by Clive Hutchby as “Walkers Editions”, between 2015 and 2020. For both revisions, Wainwright’s hand-written text and hand-drawn sketches and maps have been painstakingly updated. In the Walkers Edition, this has been done digitally, maintaining the look of the original books.

The colour coding in this guide matches that used on Wainwright’s guide book covers: Orange for the Southern Fells, Blue for the Central Fells etc.

A work in progress

Like all good websites, this one is a work in progress. There is a great deal of content here with much more to come. Although I have been fastidious in compiling the site, I would be amazed if it were error-free. If you spot an error or if you have a suggestion for improvement or if you’d like to contact me, please email me — I’d like to make this site as accurate as possible, and I’d love to hear what you think of it.

I couldn’t end this page without a quote from Wainwright himself:

Many are they who have fallen under the spell of Lakeland, and many are they who have been moved to tell of their affection, in story, and verse, and picture, and song.

— A. Wainwright, The Eastern Fells, 1955

Or in my case, …picture, and song, and website. I hope you find it useful.

David Watson — October 2025