The Lake District Peak to Pub
Seven days, thirty-five summits, and a pub at the end of every one. Here's the route, and how we walked it our own way — with the GPX from the days we tracked.
The Peak to Pub isn't ours. It came from Trail magazine, who put together a seven-day, 124km, 35-peak high route through the Lake District in their Spring 2019 issue — the idea being you walk off a big mountain each evening and straight into a good pub. It's a lovely idea, and you can read their original write-up on the Live for the Outdoors site, plus there's a video of the whole thing.
We did it in the summer of 2020. But we didn't do it the purist way, and I'll be honest about that up front.
How we actually did it
We didn't stay in the seven pubs and walk a continuous line between them. We based ourselves elsewhere and drove to each end of each day's walk instead. For the first half of the week we stayed at the Lion and the Lamb in Gosforth, out on the quiet western side near Wasdale. Not the most environmentally friendly way to do it — pub-to-pub on foot is cleaner and, frankly, more in the spirit of the thing — but the car gave us flexibility, and we made our choice. One day the weather was so grim we packed it in and came back another time. We got lost more than once. We swapped a section here and there. If you're walking the proper continuous route with your bags couriered ahead, you don't get to do any of that; if you've got a car and a loose plan, you do.
And we did still keep the best part of the idea. We didn't stay over, but we had a well-earned drink — a lemonade, mostly — in every pub at the end of every day. That bit we took seriously.
The seven days
Distances and ascent below are Trail's figures for the official route. Every day now has its own page. There's a downloadable GPX for each day we tracked on our watch (Days 1–4 and 6); a couple of legs we never got a clean recording of — Day 5, and the Blencathra half of Day 7 — so those are honestly marked as such.
| Day | Distance | Ascent | Main tops | Finish pub | From us |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Keswick → Buttermere | 18.3 km | 1,372 m | Cat Bells, Maiden Moor, High Spy, Dale Head, Robinson | The Bridge Hotel | Notes + GPX |
| 2 Buttermere → Wasdale | 13.4 km | 1,122 m | Haystacks, Brandreth, Green Gable, Great Gable | Wasdale Head Inn | Notes + GPX |
| 3 Wasdale → Eskdale | 14 km | 1,387 m | Scafell Pike, Sca Fell, Slight Side | The Woolpack Inn | Notes + GPX |
| 4 Eskdale → Langdale | 23.4 km | 1,777 m | Harter Fell, Coniston Old Man, Swirl How, Great Carrs | New Dungeon Ghyll | Notes + GPX |
| 5 Langdale → Grasmere | 13.2 km | 1,023 m | Pavey Ark, High Raise, Helm Crag | The Traveller's Rest | Notes |
| 6 Grasmere → Threlkeld | 22.5 km | 1,638 m | Dollywaggon Pike, Helvellyn, the Dodds, Clough Head | The Horse & Farrier | Notes + GPX |
| 7 Threlkeld → Keswick | 19.7 km | 1,898 m | Blencathra, Skiddaw, Carl Side | The George Hotel | Notes |
Figures are Trail magazine's for the Spring 2019 route and change with the exact line you take — our recorded tracks read a little differently. The whole thing adds up to about 124.5 km and over 10,000 m of ascent.
The seven days, one by one
The three I've written up most fully so far are the ones I remember best:
Day 3 — Wasdale to Eskdale →
Scafell Pike and Sca Fell, the two highest in England, then Slight Side and a long drop to the Woolpack — the day we got properly turned around and had to sit down with the map.
Day 7 — Blencathra and Skiddaw →
The finale. Up Blencathra by Hall's Fell — a proper scramble — then the long pull over to Skiddaw and down into Keswick. The day we ran out of legs and skipped Carl Side.
Day 6 — Grasmere to Threlkeld →
The great Helvellyn-to-Dodds ridge, nine summits and miles of high striding. Our favourite of the week, and the one with the cleanest GPS track.
The rest have their own pages too, with route notes and a GPX where we tracked it: Day 1 — Keswick to Buttermere, Day 2 — Buttermere to Wasdale, Day 4 — Eskdale to Langdale and Day 5 — Langdale to Grasmere.
If you fancy the whole thing
Trail's original feature has the full day-by-day and the pubs; their figures and the official line are the place to start. If you want to do it properly, the continuous pub-to-pub version with bags couriered ahead is the way — you finish each day where you sleep, which is the entire point. If you're more like us, a base and a car turns it into a flexible week of big Lakeland days, weather permitting.
Either way, these are serious mountain days — Scafell, Helvellyn, Blencathra and Skiddaw are no small things, and the weather can turn fast. Take a map (the OS Explorer OL4, OL5 and OL6 sheets cover the route), a compass, and the ability to use them. We needed ours.