Review: Buttermere and Keswick – The Lake District Fells – Two Books by Mark Richards

THE penultimate two books in this eight volume guidebook series have just been published and feature two areas in the North and North West of the Lake District.

The Buttermere book includes all of the fells west of Derwentwater south of the Whinlatter Pass, and east of Ennerdale and the River Liza. Eleven of the fells were featured in Wainwright’s Western Fells book and the other twenty-one were in his North Western Fells book. The Keswick book features twenty-four fells in Wainwright’s Northern Fells book but excludes Mungrisedale Common which many people never classed as a proper summit and always wondered why Wainwright ever included it, plus six fells from the North Western Fells book that are north of the Whinlatter Pass.

The main difference in these books compared with Wainwright’s guides is the fact that Mark Richards includes many more routes to the various summits than Wainwright ever included. This gives the fell walker much more choice of approaches and paths onto the fells. This also has an environmental effect in that footfall is more evenly divided over the network of paths thus reducing erosion.

Each fell chapter has an information panel giving details of the character of the fell with potential starting points and an accompanying 1:40,000 HARVEY map. The panel also includes other neighbouring fells that can be tackled at the same time plus ridge routes to these. After this comes the various route descriptions from the various starting points. The ascent routes are grouped according to the starting point with ascent and distance involved listed, along with a walking time to the summit at a pace reasonable enough to enable the walker to take into account the views encountered on route. As well as the overall map, topo diagrams have been drawn by Mark for each of the ascents from the various starting points. Panoramas are supplied for some of the summits and where they are not shown they can be downloaded from the Cicerone website. At the end of each chapter details of routes to neighbouring fells are given plus safe lines of descent should the weather change and an early retreat back to the valleys needed.

At the beginning of the books Mark details 34 different starting points for the Buttermere book and 36 in the Keswick book. These include parking details, the Grid Reference, whether parking is free, pay and display or operated by the National Trust and therefore free to Trust members, and what fells can be climbed from that particular location.

The Buttermere book includes such classic fells as Fleetwith Pike, Grisedale Pike, the High Stile range and Haystacks where Wainwright’s ashes were scattered in 1991, whilst the Keswick book includes Blencathra and the three thousand footer Skiddaw.

The beauty of the areas covered by these two books is that these fells are less frequented than the honeypots around Langdale, Ambleside and Wasdale and therefore even in the height of summer or at Bank Holiday weekends walkers are less likely to meet groups of other people on the paths and summits.

These are two of my favourite areas in the Lake District and therefore I would highly recommend these two books to others. They are the most up to date guides available for these areas both having been thoroughly researched over the last twelve months.

At the moment Mark is working on his final two books in the series – Borrowdale and Coniston and I look forward to seeing the result of his research in these areas when these two guides are published in the Spring of 2021.

By John Burland