Wainwrights

The 214 Wainwrights

Between 1955 and 1966 Alfred Wainwright, a Kendal borough treasurer, hand-lettered and illustrated seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, describing 214 summits in the Lake District with a route, a drawing, and an opinion for each. The books were never meant as a checklist — Wainwright himself was irritated by the idea — but that's what they became, and "doing the Wainwrights" is now the defining hill-walking project in England. Finishers are counted in the thousands, and several people have run them all in under a week.

The fells range from Scafell Pike, England's highest at 978 meters, to Castle Crag in Borrowdale, the only Wainwright under 1,000 feet and a twenty-minute walk from the road. In between are the famous ridges — Helvellyn's Striding Edge, the Scafells, the Coledale and Fairfield Horseshoes — and a long tail of grassy tops that exist on the list only because Wainwright liked the view from them. That's the charm: the list drags you to corners of the Lakes you'd never choose on your own.

Book by book

The badges here are grouped by Pictorial Guide, from Book One (the Eastern Fells, around Helvellyn) to Book Seven (the Western Fells, around Wasdale and Buttermere). Most walkers work through them by valley rather than by book, but the book order is how finishers talk about it, and it's a decent guide to which areas you've neglected. Heights and summit positions follow the Database of British and Irish Hills.

Click a badge or its pin to mark a fell climbed, again for want-to-climb. Wainwright's later book on the Outlying Fells — another 116 — isn't included; that's a separate list with a much smaller following. Across the border, the Munros are the Scottish equivalent.

Practical notes

The Lakes are small enough that a fit walker can do the 214 in a couple of years of weekends, and most people do them over a decade. The fells cluster: a good day on the Coledale Horseshoe takes in seven Wainwrights, the Fairfield Horseshoe eight, and a long summer day on the Helvellyn range ten. The low, outlying fells — Latrigg, Loughrigg, Castle Crag, Binsey — are the ones to keep for wet days. Everything is within an hour's drive of Keswick or Ambleside, and the Ordnance Survey's OL4 to OL7 maps cover the whole list between them.