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Adventure Bagging, nobody climbs just one Wainwright
The First List
I was with my dad. We’d come over to the Lake District from our home amid the decaying remnants of the industrial North East. We watched the bustle of walkers in Keswick. I suppose we simply followed them. Over Sticks Pass we hiked, taking what felt like a thoroughly adventurous route from Thirlmere to Ullswater, never quite daring to tread on the lofty summits that surrounded us.
I was perhaps nine or ten years old. My dad worked in a factory, bashing bits of metal together, or apart, but on that footpath descending towards Glenridding he talked only about his time in the army, travelling the world. I just stared in awe at the mountains.
Later, with copies of Wainwright’s Eastern Fells, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, and Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the myths, the magic and the mountain landscapes of all three merged into one in my imagination. I’ve never really been able to separate them since. Looking back, I realise they were all doing the same thing. Each, in their own way, was handing me a map and quietly saying, ‘Go and see what’s over the next hill.’
What I do know is that I’ve been drawn back again and again to those fells: the Helvellyns, the Skiddaws, the Scafells, Eagle Crag and Stone Arthur. Some part of me remembers every one of them.
I suppose that’s why a perfectly rational part of me is driven to stand on every summit in Wainwright’s list of his favourite 214 Lakeland fells. I wish I could tell you why. I don’t collect stamps. I enjoy birdwatching, but I’m not compelled to seek out every rare species, nor do I feel the need to run every parkrun from A to Z. But when it comes to mountain tops, I do like to tick them off. I don’t use the term myself, but I’m clearly a peak bagger.
I’m not alone. For something so individually distinctive, each hill unique in its height, geology, geomorphology, flora, fauna, quarries, farms and history, people have always liked grouping mountains together.
Munro’s list dates from 1891: 282 distinct Scottish summits over 3,000 feet above sea level. For the serious hillwalker, completing the Munros remains the pinnacle of British mountain challenges. Wainwright’s list is different. It is based not on height but on quality, or at least one man’s idea of a good hill. Despite his occasional failings, Wainwright gave huge sums to animal charities, which makes him the greatest compiler of hill lists in my eyes.
There are plenty of others: Nuttalls, Corbetts, Birketts, Donalds and Ethels, to name just a few. They were never intended as competitive challenges, simply as ways of classifying the high points on the map. No, they were never a challenge, they were always something much more subtle, they were an invitation.
I soon found myself putting pencil rings around summits I’d visited and nipping up one more hill whenever I was climbing in Scotland, quietly ticking away at the lists. I backpacked around Knoydart, carefully visiting every spot height over 3,000 feet to make sure I collected every Munro.
Without a list, we naturally return to our favourite places.
Having a list means we don’t miss the quieter corners. Indeed, it compels us to visit them. It also keeps motivation alive.
Fin Cop, above the Monsal Viaduct in the Peak District, is a perfect example. On the map it appears little more than a slightly higher field than those surrounding it. On the ground, though, it commands sweeping views across the White Peak, perched above the steep-sided Wye Valley with an almost magical prominence. A small limestone cairn, diminutive beside the drystone wall next to it, marks the summit. Yet after a scrubby, jungle-bash walk in from Monsal Head, if you wait there long enough to watch the setting sun, with redstarts and stonechats flitting across the heath, you’ll carry that memory for the rest of your life. None of that happens because Fin Cop is famous. It happens because, years ago, someone thought it worthy of appearing on a list. A simple pencil tick beside Fin Cop, somewhere between Featherbed Top and Flask Edge in an alphabetical catalogue of Peak District summits, becomes a way of preserving one perfect Derbyshire evening.
With a list - whether it’s the Munros, the Wainwrights, the Ethels or the Nuttalls - every weekend has a purpose. As you tick the guidebook, fill in the logbook or colour another square on the map, satisfaction quietly grows. A list gives shape to the passing years. The pencil ticks accumulate almost without you noticing.
I’ll post a photograph of the cairn on South Head or the rocky summit of Slight Side and that’s when I find my tribe. Mention those remote, seldom-visited summits on Instagram and a handful of like-minded people immediately respond with a knowing thumbs-up, or, better still, accept the invitation and go there themselves.
Spending years walking hill lists inevitably made me think about the routes themselves.
Designing Better Journeys
Most classic lists tell you where to go, but very few help you decide how to go. Complete the Wainwrights or the Munros in numerical order and you’ll spend countless days retracing your steps, driving the same roads and climbing the same valleys simply because the next summit on the list happens to be nearby.
I became fascinated by a different question: if you were starting from scratch, how would you design the journeys? Not the shortest journeys, nor the fastest, but the ones that would leave people with the best memories.
Sometimes that meant linking famous ridges with quieter neighbours. Sometimes it meant ignoring the obvious route altogether in favour of one that revealed a hidden corrie, an unexpected waterfall or a lonely tarn where few people linger. Efficiency mattered, but only because it allowed each day in the hills to feel complete rather than compromised.
That thinking eventually found its way into the guidebooks we published. Rather than treating them as collections of individual summits, we approached them as collections of memorable mountain days.
Every route seemed to contain an unexpected gift. A wire bridge into Upper Glen Nevis. A hidden cave in Longsleddale. A stretch of path that somehow never makes it onto the postcards. The lists may provide the excuse, but it’s always those discoveries that people remember.
The Ethels are a wonderful concept. They encourage people to explore every corner of the Peak District while celebrating Ethel Haythornthwaite’s enormous contribution to creating Britain’s first National Park. Given that the Peak District is the back garden of Sheffield and Manchester, it’s only right that it finally has its own celebrated hill list. Access to the countryside was fought for on these moors. It’s fitting that Ethel’s legacy continues to encourage people to explore them, even if some landowners still make that harder than it should be.
However, there are practical complications.
Not every Ethel is easily accessible and a handful lie beyond the National Park boundary, slightly muddying what many walkers assume the challenge represents.
Then there are some surprising omissions. Carl Wark, with its Iron Age hill fort, isn’t an Ethel. Neither is Bamford Edge, arguably the Peak District’s second most visited summit.
Anna Paxton in her guide Peak Bagging Peak District, chooses to focus on the 74 accessible Ethels while incorporating other outstanding summits creating the finest possible walks and runs, rather than insisting every named Ethel be included.
The original Ethels remain a worthy objective, but with Peak Bagging Peak District the challenge is both more enjoyable and more achievable.
We record the numbers, but we remember the conversations, the weather, the people we walked with, or met along the way, and the coffee and cake afterwards. (A particular shout-out to the Penny Pot in Edale and the Bird Café near Hathersage.)
We remember dipping our toes in the beck after climbing Wetherlam. We remember snow buntings on the Cairngorm Plateau. Nobody remembers summit number 147.
Perhaps one day I’ll be sitting in a nursing home, enjoying my last buttered scone and looking out of the window, quietly smiling to myself that I never did tick them all off.
We can all tick off each mountain, adding to our collection, but in truth, what we are really doing is collecting days.
