Answer

By Country Walking magazine

The 214 fells lovingly detailed by Alfred Wainwright in his Pictorial Guides are the bedrock of any trip to the Lake District.
Your first port of call is the seven guides themselves, as they carefully split the district into sectors divided by natural boundaries such as river valleys. For example, if you stay in Ambleside, almost all the fells of Books 1, 2 and 3 will be in relatively easy reach, while if you’re basing yourself in Keswick, the fells of Books 5 and 6 are yours to explore. Those books include some real classics – Catbells, the Langdale Pikes, Skiddaw, Helvellyn and Loughrigg to name but a few.
You can up your tally by checking the ‘Ridge Routes’ section at the end of every fell’s chapter – he explains the best ways to string together a few more peaks while you’re up.
Bear in mind you’ll need to track down the new revised issues (published by Frances Lincoln and updated by Chris Jesty), as AW’s originals are rooted firmly in the terrain of the Fifties and Sixties.
Also look at Wainwright’s later coffee-table books, especially ‘Fellwalking with Wainwright’ (also from Frances Lincoln). It does a grand job of linking great Lakeland circuits, for example the Fairfield Horseshoe, the Coledale Round and the Newlands Round. Do two of those in the course of a weekend and you’ll knock off as many as 14 tops by sundown Sunday. The only drawback is that it’s not very portable!
Steve Larkin’s book ‘Doing the Wainwrights’ chronicles his bid to summit all 214 in the course of a year, and the appendix outlines the walking days he created to bag as many as possible. Click here for more details.
But perhaps our best recommendation is a book due out shortly. CW guidewriter Mark Reid will be publishing ‘Perfect Weekends in the Lake District’ this spring, the follow-up to his outstanding weekender guides for the Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales. You can guarantee it’ll pack in some real classics and make the weekend as easy as possible. Click here for more.
And because we love your question so much, next month we’ll put the Coledale Round into our Routes section – just to get you started!