What is a Wainwright?

A Wainwright is one of the 214 Lake District fells described in Alfred Wainwright’s seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966. Every page of those guides — the maps, the drawings, the handwriting — was done by hand, and they’re still in print.

Unlike the other lists here there’s no height rule — a fell is a Wainwright because Wainwright included it. The list runs from Castle Crag in Borrowdale at a modest 290 metres — the only Wainwright under 1,000 feet — to Scafell Pike at 978 metres, the highest ground in England.

It’s a forgiving list to start on. There’s a fell to suit most fitness levels and most weather, and it’s all inside a national park you can drive across in about an hour. Plenty of people who had no intention of ticking anything off end up doing exactly that.