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Kendal Museum
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the great lakeland challenge
Buy the Book
of the Challenge from Striding Edge

Lake District Tourism & Conservation Partnership

The Great Lakeland Challenge

The excitement of the eight days of the Challenge, last May, has died to an echo but the GREAT NEWS is that the long awaited book of reports has been delivered from Titus Wilson the Kendal printer.

This limited edition is offered to the public at a bargain price of £16.50 and is available via the Striding Edge website.

Members should apply via the Kendal Museum address at the discounted rate of £12.50.

The book entitled The Great Lakeland Challenge published recently by the Society contained a copyright statement that proved to be incorrect. The Wainwright Society regret this and would like to correct this statement as shown below.

The Wainwright Society is grateful to the 236 members who submitted their reports, to Peter Linney and Liz Lemal who compiled them into this book and to all who supplied photographs of their walks. The Society is also indebted to the Wainwright Estate and Frances Lincoln Ltd for giving permission to reproduce material from the the Pictorial Guides To The Lakeland Fells and The Outlying Fells Of Lakeland.

Pages from the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells are copyright © The Estate of A. Wainwright 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, and for The Outlying Fells of Lakeland are copyright © The Estate of A. Wainwright1974. The quotation and illustration, on the rear cover, are taken from Memoirs of a Fellwanderer copyright © The Estate of A. Wainwright 1993

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise), without either prior permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The Great Lakeland Challenge
By Secretary Peter Linney

How can I attempt to summarise this outstanding event without resorting to a host of statistics? Well, the germ of the idea came from Peter Hardy (member 9), who had the notion that the members of the Wainwright Society should each climb a fell on one day in May. This would be to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Book 1 - THE EASTERN FELLS of A Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to The Lakeland Fells.

This idea was then considered by the Society management committee. Now it is well known that a committee, on being set the task to create a horse, ended up with a camel, so we approached the idea carefully. The weather, in the Lake District is, to say the least, fairly unpredictable, so putting one’s trust in a particular day seemed risky and as there is no record of the actual date of publication we opted for an eight day period incorporating two Saturdays from 14 to 21 May. Additionally we decided to offer this great opportunity to non-members, on payment of £10, for which they would receive membership for the whole of 2005.

There are, of course, 214 fells recorded within the seven Pictorial Guides but we decided to add The Outlying Fells of Lakeland which we named for the purposes of the Great Lakeland Challenge, as Book 8, thus adding a further 56 walks, making a total of 270 fells and walks, in all.

the great lakelan challenge book

By mid January 100 of the 270 had been claimed and by the middle of April all had gone. Of the 270, 78 had been claimed by existing members, the balance of 192 being new members. The additional publicity brought in even more members and the Society membership topped 600 by the end of May. The eight days in May were not all fine and sunny but most were, as the preceding reports will testify.

We agreed that of each £10, paid by new members claiming a fell, £3 would go towards footpath repairs in the Lake District and we were delighted to donate £570 towards footpath repairs on Thorneythwaite Fell on Glaramara.

It is known that 265 fells/walks were accomplished, so 5 were not. The reasons for this 2% failure were many and varied. I failed to complete Scout Scar as I was at very short notice needed to climb Skiddaw with Sir Christopher Bonington and the ‘Excess Baggage’ team from Radio 4. Two more were seriously ill at the time of the challenge and the others had very good reasons for not making the Challenge.

‘Challengers’ were asked to write a brief report, 200 to 250 words was suggested, and to provide a picture or two as a record of the event and that is when the fun started. It was realised that all those taking part, did so because they enjoy the walking, but that was not the case for submitting a report. Eventually we have received reports covering 262 of the 270 fells/walks. They vary in length from a few lines (about 40 words) to several pages (1,900 words!!) the average length is about 280 words but is interesting that Book 8 averages the second longest beaten only by Book 3, The Central Fells at 374 words per report. We decided against severe editing of the reports and what you see is virtually what was provided to us. Several Challengers provided photographs of their walk, a few sent sketches and some none at all. I have used the pictures where provided and otherwise I have extracted a suitable drawing from AW’s work and we are grateful to Frances Lincoln and the Wainwright family for granting permission to use these extracts from the magnificent works.

The resultant book of 300 pages and as many illustrations is, I think, a superb effort and it will hold pride of place alongside other Wainwright Titles.

We have decided that the print run should be a limited edition of 500 numbered copies and orders from Society Members have already taken up many of these. Nevertheless we understand that there will be many non-members who will wish to own this fine book and so arrangements are available via Striding Edge to obtain numbered copies.