The blog for our Backpacking in Britain website. To contact us, use the Contact page on the main site.
We live in East Cheshire which is centrally placed for travel to walking areas in England, Wales and southern Scotland. Having retired a few years ago (very early), we can backpack the wilderness areas of the country at almost any time all the year round.
For years now we have backpacked almost exclusively. Pitching a tent high in the mountains is without doubt the best move we ever made, and gave us a completely new perspective on walking. There is really nothing like being in the mountains at dawn and dusk to experience the landscape in fading and emerging light and rapidly changing atmospheric conditions, and we can do longer circuits that are not possible as day walks. The best camps of all are in clear conditions with winter snow, which can produce breathtaking vistas in the reddish light of sunrise or sunset.
The main site has over 170 routes. While some of these cover well known and popular regions, there are many that explore little trodden rough wilderness areas as well as unfrequented pockets near to the honeypots, and we think of these as our speciality. We have often had excellent trips with complete solitude in areas that would probably horrify most walkers accustomed to easy paths, and it is these that give the greatest feeling of wilderness.
We are not really peak baggers as such, but we were somewhat drawn into the game by circumstance. When John and Anne Nuttall published their excellent books covering the mountains of England and Wales, they provided a ready made source of walk routes that saved us a lot of time and effort when we were both working and very busy. The underlying bagging approach ignited our passion for deserted wilderness areas and remains a major consideration in our route planning.
We completed the mountains of England with an assisted ascent of Pillar Rock on 1st. September 1995, and the mountains of Wales with Crib Goch on 18th. July 1996. Our last Wainwright, which was incidental since we were not ‘doing’ them, was Hard Knott on 8th. August 1997.
