Ascending High Street via the Riggindale Ridge feels adventurous from the get go. Starting from Mardale Head, this route takes in the rocky sweep of the ridge to High Street before continuing over Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell, making for a exhilarating mountain day with head shaking views over Haweswater, Small Water and the Far Eastern Fells.
High Street via Riggindale Ridge
Route Map and GPX
A rewarding High Street round from Mardale Head, climbing by the Riggindale Ridge before crossing High Street, Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell. This is a moderate Lake District walk with rocky ground, steep climbs and a far bigger sense of mountain journey than the mileage first suggests.
HOW TO USE THE MAP
For the best ‘experience’ using the map, click on that box in the top left to go ‘full screen’ (Esc to come back). Click icons to reveal details. Zoom by pinching or hold CTRL and roll the mouse.
Route at a glance
- Distance: 12km (7.5 miles)
- Ascent: 823m (2700ft)
- Time: 7.5 hours
- Start: Mardale Head car park
- Difficulty: Moderate
- Map: OS Explorer OL7
- AW Book: Far Eastern Fells
Wainwrights
- High Street: 828m (2717ft)
- Mardale Ill Bell: 760m (2493ft)
- Harter Fell: 778m (2552ft)
Field notes
- Terrain: Rocky ridge climbing, steep mountain paths, exposed summit ground and a rough descent towards Nan Bield and Small Water
- Navigation: Clear enough in good weather, but the ridge, summit plateau and onward line to Harter Fell would feel far more serious in poor visibility
- Parking: Start from the small car park at Mardale Head, at the far end of Haweswater
Watch out for
The climb up Long Stile asks for hands in places, the summit of High Street is exposed when the weather turns, and the day can stretch well beyond the neat timings once stops, views and the pull of places like Small Water get involved.
Why do it
It gives you one of the best approaches to High Street, with the drama of the Riggindale Ridge, the history and scale of the summit, and then that wonderful finish by Nan Bield and Small Water.
Dog friendly?
Only for fit, sure-footed dogs in decent conditions. The rocky ridge, hands-on sections and long mountain day make this more serious than an ordinary fell stroll.
Is this walk for you?
This is a very good walk if you want a satisfying High Street route with proper ridge drama and a few extra rewards beyond the main summit. It suits walkers after a moderate mountain day with character, rather than a quick up-and-down from the valley.
High Street via The Riggindale Ridge – My story
A Mountain Virgin!
They’re his words, not mine.
I’ve purpose designed this hike to suit a friend who’s joining me for the day, Mr Gavin Foley. Little did I know that this would be the most moving and inspiring walks I’ve been on so far.
Overall we’ll ascend 823m, walking 7.5 miles, with breaks and catching up almost 20 years (minus a couple of brief meetings) I anticipate our journey to take us 4-5 hours, little do I know what’s ahead!
It’s a good half an hour longer drive to ‘Mardale Head’ than it was to Kentmere (from Manchester), even though they’re only 4 miles apart if you’re the crow they talk about. Mardale does not exist on my Tom Tom (it’s 2015 remember) or Google Maps. I follow the A6 through Kendal and then use the old reliable OS map! Haweswater is well signposted although I have a master road map navigator beside me.
Setting off
We park up, mix a protein shake, get our bags on. We set off from Mardale Head at the top of Haweswater – we would have had a good laugh at this when we were 14! There’s an obvious path on the other side that will lead us to The Rigg, the wooded peninsular jutting out from High Street towards Haweswater (check out the picture I took on the way home).
Mardale – A History Lesson
Mardale Head in reality is a small car park squeezing a dozen (or so) vehicles at the end of the road running along the east side of Haweswater. Haweswater is a very typical Cumbrian lake, or so it would seem. In fact, a century ago there were two villages where Haweswater lies now, Mardale Green and Measand.
The land, and much around it, including High Raise, was purchased by the Manchester Corporation in the 1920’s to feed Manchester with drinking water and construction of a dam (at the other end) was started in 1929. The valley was then flooded in 1935. Julia Bradbury would tell you there’s enough water in there to bath everybody in the world, three times! Of course, all of the buildings were demolished and the materials used in places like Shap. There were bodies from the graveyard exhumed and moved to Shap too!
If you live in the north-west, next time there’s a hose pipe ban, head for Mardale Head and you may see some of the dry-stone field walls around the two villages, gate posts and parts of a bridge.
That’s the warm up, we’re on a hike from here.
The Riggindale Ridge
At the end of the stone wall we take a left and make a start up Swine Crag, then Heron Crag and over Eagle Crag. Next, it’s a great walk up to Rough Crag with jaw-dropping views and then a nice climb up Long Stile, you’ll need your hands free now. The legs are really feeling it. Young children and asthmatic wives may be best left in the valley, or at home. It’ll be almost 8 hours before we get back to the car park!
There are a few false peaks but there is a cairn at the top of the rocky climb welcoming you to the top, take your photos here. There’s a photo of the ridge we just came up from this point but there’s no point in you seeing it as it just looks like ‘a bit of a hill’ and I know you won’t see what I saw, you had to have been there.
High Street Summit
There’s sign of a mountain summit in the form of an Ordnance Survey trig pillar, we’re at 828m (2717ft). The summit lies on the old Roman road, get it, High Street? I doubt the stones laid on it now had been put down by anyone with an Italian accent. In the 18th and 19th centuries, folk used to take horses up here and race them – hence Racecourse Hill on Ordnance Survey maps!
Time for a photo and a look at the westerly view where most of the other Wainwrights reside.
Being honest, there are two reasons we don’t spend too long here. The weather has turned, we need to get our sweaters on now, coats and hats. It’s a wee bit chilly and very exposed up here. Heading south, then south east for Mardale Ill Bell, we’re in search for a wind break. We disturb a couple of sheep to confiscate a rock but we realise quickly that we’re bigger than sheep and can’t make much of a shelter against a small rock.
I apologise to the sheep, inviting them back in but they’ve moved on from what they were doing previously and are having lunch now themselves. The rock that we do find shelters us long enough to have a few Jelly Babies and on my part the best thing since sliced bread, rice pudding. The Pot Noodles will have to wait. There’s an 80’s theme going on here. Eating non-food like this is usually far from my menu but what do I have to feel guilty about after burning a thousand calories!
Mardale Ill Bell
Mardale Ill Bell, at 760m (2493ft), marks half time. It’s not the most interesting of peaks but again the views are amazing and it’s our route to Harter Fell.
On the other side of Mardale Ill Bell, heading south east again, we drop down the ridge 450 ft to where the Nan Bield Pass crosses our path and where the old stone windbreak will give us some reprieve from the cold, and allow us to get the stove going to heat enough water to fill the pots we brought with noodles in them. Gav goes for the beef variety while I stick to the old classic, chicken and mushroom, it’s not real chicken – I’m vegetarian, although I stopped eating them for 12 months, 26 years ago until to my delight someone pointed out that it was soya.
A rocky climb down leads us to the Nan Bield Pass that crosses over the col, then a tough exhilarating 154m climb up the crag to Harter Fell 778m (2552ft) – these last two mountains I included in my Kentmere Horseshoe last weekend.
Nan Bield
Bield is a northern dialect word for shelter, or refuge. Nan is a traditional pet-name for someone called Ann/Anne. Who the shelter is named after is a mystery. The earliest record of the name Nan Bield dates from 1823.
Harter Fell
I loved this next climb a couple of weeks ago when I did the Kentmere Horseshoe, 500 ft up to Harter Fell. It wouldn’t be too bad if we hadn’t already ascended 2200 ft but the calves are going to feel this one. Gav’s in front of me and I’m following his steps, I know his feet are following a secure route while he’s thinking more about where he’s stepping but the problem with this is that he’s 6ft whilst I am 5ft 6. What this means is that I’m actually taking steps that are too big for my short legs, and they won’t like me for it.
The views of Swine Crag, Heron Crag, Eagle Crag, over Rough Crag and then Long Stile up to High Street (our ascent) are fantastic as you climb up to Harter. You take a moment to reflect on the work you’ve actually put in to get here – it’s a bit overwhelming to say the least.
Harter Fell has a cairn at the top of the climb before you get to the true summit, enjoy the views down into the basin of Small Water below. The summit cairn has a load of old steel mixed in from a fence that lived up here on the horseshoe many years ago. Unfortunately, there’s a new fence that runs close to the cairn which spoils thing a little.
We’ve now to decide on our descent – the long, easy, girlie way around Harter Fell Gully down the Gatescarth Pass back to Mardale Head, or the shorter, rough, manly, adventurer’s route back down to the Nan Bield Pass, following in the footsteps of 200 year old pack horses down past Small Water, with a nice walk along the Small Water Beck back to the car. It’s a no brainer, this is to be the most rewarding part of the day.
Climbing down is great and there are a couple of nice waterfalls but the sun has come out again now, and when we get down to the stone shelters that Alfred talks of, by the shores of Small Water, it’s around 5 o’clock. We don’t leave Small Water for another 90 minutes.
Being in the Small Water basin is completely awe inspiring. This could possibly be the nicest place I’ve ever been.
The stone shelters, there are three good ones, are plenty big enough to get into and really make me think that I’ll come back for the night some time. Alfred Wainwright describes them as ‘spider infested’ but it seems that the spider community at Small Water has diminished since the 50’s. I imagine camping here on a nice warm summers day, cooking dinner on the stove, sleeping in one of these man-made dry-stone caves and sitting out looking up into clear night skies, wow! The water is as clear as a bell and no colder than the beach on a summers day so a morning swim would be great.
There’s a massive rock about 18ft long resting on another large rock like it’s either been placed there by the giants eons ago as a viewpoint over the tarn or I’ve Photoshopped it in the picture, I could have stayed here for hours, we were here for about an hour and a half.
As we tear ourselves away and cross the stepping stones where the tarn becomes the beck, a mile from the van, the water starts falling from the skies. For the sake of it we start running down the rocky beck but waterfalls put an end to any urgency every time you pick up a rhythm.
At the bottom of the beck where it meets Haweswater, up to the right you can clearly see the Gatescarth Pass swaying down the opposite side of Harter Fell, another day maybe but how I would give up returning to Small Water I don’t know.
Time to get changed, a quick bite and on the road. There’s one other vehicle left and that’s the minibus belonging to the group camping on a flat patch of ground hiding by the side of the tarn up the beck, we saw the tents from Harter.
As we drive back up along the reservoir the sun beats down from the south-west. I have to stop suddenly at Hollow Stone as we are rewarded for our 2700ft ascent, the 7 miles we walked over 8 hours (that’s less than 1 mile per hour!) and the 4000 calories we each burned. We are presented with probably the best view I’ve seen.
Keeping track of the 214
High Street, Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell were three of the easier ones to tick off this route – the harder job is remembering which of the 214 you’ve already stood on top of, ten years and dozens of walks later.
The 214 Wainwrights Checkmap is built for exactly that: colour in each summit as you bag it, so a day like this one never gets lost in the pile.
I still think about those dry-stone shelters above Small Water, and one day I’ll go back with a stove, a sleeping bag and no van to get back to before dark.
READ NEXT
The Kentmere Horseshoe
One of the epic Lakeland circular walks, and the one that had me including Harter Fell and Mardale Ill Bell before I’d even set off up Riggindale.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN
Hammock camping in the UK
Fancy sleeping out above Small Water some time? Everything you need to know to get started with hammock camping, from someone who’s slept in a fair few dry-stone shelters too.