Project Wainwright 2007

Well what a marvellous week of weather we’ve had up here in Cheshire, its been sunny all week, with no rain and very little wind to speak of. I was half expecting the good weather to break just in time for the weekend and dump a load of rain on us on Saturday and Sunday, but no – its held out good all weekend too.

I got an email from my old walking buddy Rob (see Herriot Way journal on the web site) this week, asking if I had anything planned in terms of walking for the weekend. If the weather remained good my plan was to kick off my Wainwright bagging project this weekend with a jaunt around Easdale.

For a while now I have been planning to start ticking off the Lakeland fells and tops classified by Alfred Wainwright in his 7 pictorial guides. He described 214 hills and these are now collectively known as the Wainwrights. Anyone who has done any walking in the Lakes has bagged a Wainwright or two – its difficult not to. As a bonus for me, many of the Wainwrights also have trig points on them, so I get to bag some trigs at the same time. I also plan to use the new found freedom provided by my ability to wild camp to spend a couple of longer days on the fells.

I have started to work out my routes on Memory Map, but with the best will in the world, this project is going to take me 3 or 4 years to complete I think. I’m limited to the number of weekends I can spend in the Lakes, the closest parts are 100 miles from home and the furthest ones are 3 hours drive for me. Nevertheless I need to start somewhere, so I picked a fairly easy one to start, with potentially 5 Wainwrights in an 11 mile walk.

Rob’s always been a big fan of the Lakes, so he was all for it. He, like me, has been struggling with fitness recently and he’s been working hard in the gym and doing some Peak District walks to try and get back into the groove. He warned me he was still a bit slow up the hills, but if I could put up with that he was gagging for a good Lakeland walk.