Tim Corrigan blogs on cycling, trips and programming…

Scafell Pike is the highest mountain in England at 974 metres. By world standards not that high but a sizeable days walk nonetheless and one well worth doing as in clear weather the views are extensive across the north west of England and even north Wales.

I’d been up Scafell once before via the shortest (and supposedly least scenic) Wasdale Head route so this time Liz and I fancied the Borrowdale via Sty Head route starting at Seathwaite farm. As you can see from the photos we had amazingly good weather and all of my additional layers stayed firmly in the ruck sack.

We also decided to use the famous Wainwright book for route finding which we found fun and certainly adequate (we backed it up with the OS Explorer 6 map).

I’d recommend the Borrowdale route – it was varied in terms of view and type of walking. Wainwright does give an alternative route from the summit via Broad Crag Col which we followed on our descent. However, though this is a shorter distance we found the scree very loose and found progress descending it slow and difficult so we’d probably have preferred to descend the way we we came up – via Lingmell col. If you are looking for a different route for the whole way back (and a slightly tougher challenge) try the following circular route and let me know how you get on!