A short, hard weekend from Buttermere
One easy lake, one proper mountain day.
One base: Buttermere. You unpack once.
- Nights
- 2
- Best in
- Spring, Summer, Autumn
- Experienced walkers
- Dogs
Buttermere is one of the smallest bases in this guide, a scatter of buildings between two lakes, Buttermere and Crummock Water, with Fleetwith Pike, Haystacks and the High Stile ridge rising straight from the valley floor. Two nights is enough to do the valley’s one easy walk and the one hard fell it’s known for, without needing much more from the village than a bed and a place to eat. Honister Slate Mine sits a few minutes’ drive away at the top of the pass, still working slate, worth knowing about even though it isn’t part of either day’s plan here.
Who this suits
Fit, experienced walkers who want a short, focused trip built around a single serious objective, and who don’t need a wide choice of shops or restaurants to enjoy a weekend. Haystacks involves scrambling near the summit and a long, rough descent, so it isn’t a first fell, and the full circuit runs to nearly fourteen kilometres with well over six hundred metres of climbing. A dog can manage it well, but the short scramble known as the Chimney sometimes means lifting a dog between people rather than letting it find its own way, worth knowing before setting out rather than discovering halfway up.
The honest caveat
There’s no railway station within thirty kilometres of Buttermere and no fuel, cashpoint or large shop in the village itself, so this isn’t a spontaneous, turn-up-and-see trip. Arrive with whatever the weekend needs already in the car. It also isn’t a trip for anyone hoping to fill two nights with variety: Buttermere’s own walking amounts to one lake and one fell, which is exactly enough for a short, hard weekend and not much more than that.
Day by day
-
Day 1
Arrive, and walk the shore
Buttermere has two hotels, a church and not much else, which is most of the point. The lake circuit starts right at the National Trust car park and stays flat and close to the shore for its full four and a half miles, through a short tunnel cut into the rock below Hassness, an easy way to get the legs moving before the next day's climb.
-
Day 2
Haystacks, Wainwright's favourite
The route follows the shore to Scarth Gap Pass, then climbs hard onto ground that gets rougher with every hundred metres, with short hands-on scrambles near the top and a scatter of small tarns, including Innominate Tarn, where Wainwright's ashes were scattered after his death. The descent past the old quarry workings above Warnscale Beck is loose and slow underfoot, so this is a full day out, not an afternoon.
If it is coming down sideways: Wet rock on Haystacks' summit scrambles is a hazard rather than an inconvenience, and a poor forecast is better spent touring Honister Slate Mine at the top of the pass, which runs underground regardless of the weather outside.
Where to stay for this trip
All within a short drive of Buttermere, so the day plans above still work.
Grange, near Keswick, Cumbria
Riverside Retreat - Grange
Sleeps 6 · 3 beds
- Hot tub
- Wood burner
- No dogs