“Another great trip to the Lake District with the Gwent Mountaineering Club. Lots of fells revisited from a different base and new ones summited. Great organisation, food, and company as always.”
Nineteen members stayed at Stair Cottage in the Newlands Valley for a long weekend of fell-walking at the end of March/beginning of April 2023. Blessed with largely dry weather, it was a great trip away. Much was achieved by way of walks of varying difficulty and terrain, visiting well-known fells such as Catbells, High Spy, Dale Head, Hindscarth, Robinson, Grasmoor, and many lesser-known fells during the course of the weekend. We didn’t keep count but it might be fair to say that more than 200 ‘person-summits’ were achieved in total.
Many of the summits visited appear on various lists of hills defined according to specific criteria. Wainwrights, for example are the list of 214 fells described in Alfred Wainwright‘s seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells (1955–66). They form a natural focus for hill-walkers visiting the Lake District but there are other lists too – Nuttalls and Birketts for example. Apart from a strong sense of achievement and well-being that comes from completing ascents of all the hills in any chosen list, there’s a distinctive variety of places that will have been visited. Something to keep you going back to the Lake District time after time for years.
Gwent Mountaineering Club usually organise a trip or two to the Lake District each year but individual members often visit more frequently.