The Eastern Fells

It is now sixty years since Alfred Wainwright published the first of the seven volumes that make up his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, detailing the 214 principal hills and mountains of the Lake District. Totalling more than 2,100 pages of meticulously hand-drawn and hand-lettered pages, the Pictorial Guides represent a "love letter" to a landscape that he had surveyed so definitively on foot and in ink. While the grandeur and poetry of the fells is unchanged since AW's day, the pace at which small changes may be encountered on the ground has never been greater. Walls, gates, stiles and fences are constantly being built, re-sited or removed altogether. Many paths have been obliterated, and new ones imprinted by the feet of countless hikers. Today's walkers need an up-to-the-minute guidebook to help them find the best routes to the summits, while avoiding potential hazards along the way. These new Walker's Editions of Wainwright's Pictorial Guides have been comprehensively revised and reissued a?? in a new, portable flexibound format a?? as practical and detailed guidebooks for visitors to the Lakeland fells. Every path, map, diagram and route description has been checked and corrected. These revisions have been undertaken by Wainwright expert Clive Hutchby, an international journalist and editor, and author of The Wainwright Companion. The Eastern Fells, the first of the new guidebooks, covers the area north of Ambleside, between Ullswater and Thirlmere, and includes the ascents of Helvellyn, Catstycam and Great Dodd.

Born in Blackburn in 1907, Alfred Wainwright left school at the age of 13. A holiday at the age of 23 kindled a life-long love affair with the Lake District. Following a move to Kendal in 1941 he began to devote every spare moment he had to researching and compiling the original seven Pictorial Guides.

CLIVE HUTCHBY climbed his very first Lakeland fell just two years after the publication of the last of legendary fellwalker and guidebook writer Alfred.