THE NORTHERN FELLS

'Circular in plan, the area of the Northern Fells is completely severed from all other mountainous parts of the Lake District by Bassenthwaite Lake, the Vale of Keswick and the low country of the Glenderamackin River, which extend like a wide moat around the southern base of the group.  West and north these fells are bounded by the coastal plain of Cumberland and east by the valley of Eden.  Thus they rise in isolation as an independent and separate geographical unit.

This circle of high ground is divided naturally into three almost equal segments by the main valleys draining the area, the headwaters of which spring from the vast upland basin of Skiddaw Forest.  The south-western sector is occupied by the mass of Skiddaw, the south-eastern by Blencathra and its satellites, and the northern, which is of lower elevation and consequently hidden in views from the south by the other two, is a tract of rolling hills comprising the Caldbeck and Uldale Fells.'
Alfred Wainwright The Northern Fells

NB:  The heights of fells given in this table are those as recorded by Alfred Wainwright in his original set of Pictorial Guides and not the revised heights resurveyed by Ordnance Survey and printed on their latest 1:25000 Explorer maps.

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Photographs taken with a Fuji MX-2900 Zoom or a Canon EOS 20D
Copyright © 2009 Derek Cockell     All Rights Reserved

THE PICTORIAL GUIDES

The Eastern Fells
The Far Eastern Fells
The Central Fells
The Southern Fells
The Northern Fells
The North Western Fells
The Western Fells

The 214 Challenge