Fell Foot Brow - Gummer's How - Lightwood - Cartmel Fell - Sow How Tarn Circular

Mike Patefield

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As you start the walk up Gummer's How the board on the right tells how cattle are used to manage the habitat. The view of Lakeside to the left immediately opens up before the path climbs upwards. Take your time as you go up as the view to the south and west unfolds. Gummer's How is a Marilyn, with no neighbouring peaks to block the magnificent 360-degree vista. Go a little to the west towards the lake for the view taking in the full length of Windermere and the central Lakeland fells beyond.

The Munros are a list of 282 separate Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet above sea level, originally written by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. This has become so well-known that even people outside hill-walking circles have heard of it and Munro-bagging is a popular activity with a certain sort of hairy-kneed walker. In 1992 Alan Dawson published an alternative list of British hills, which instead focused on relative height, taking as his criterion an elevation of 150m (492 feet) above the surrounding countryside, regardless of absolute height. This therefore includes many of the excellent hills of England and ensures that the effort of climbing them will be rewarded with good views. He called them Marilyns (get it). There are about 1,556 Marilyns in the UK, of which Gummer's How is one.

The walk up Gummer's How can be quite busy due to its accessibility from the car park. Most walkers return down the same way but this walk explores the very quiet regions beyond the summit to make a delightful circular walk. The continuation to the north has views unfolding of the full length of the lake. As this section of the walk is little-known, the paths are rather obscure and fade away in places. Hence it is important to follow the route on the open fell downhill very carefully into woodland. After this the paths and tracks are relatively easy to follow over Cartmel Fell, then to pass by the beautiful Sow How Tarn.

England - North England - Cumbria - Lake District - South East

Features

Great Views, Hills or Fells, Wildlife, Woodland

10/5/2024 - Sarah Green

Walked this on a lovely October day. Views were amazing all the way round and very good, clear straightforward instructions. We veered off to Ravens Barrow at point 11 on our way to Sow How Tarn to look over the Grange-Over-Sand coast and were rewarded with more glorious views! We also did the scramble up Gummer How which was fun but not sure it would be a good idea on a damp day! Loved the walk.

10/9/2020 - Adrian Spencer

Just completed the walk, rather excellent! Only word of warning is the path in the forest is exceptionally slippy in places even with stout boots.

11/21/2019 - victoria fox

We completed this lovely walk today 20/11/19. It was a lovely easy walk and almost impossible to go wrong, fitbit said it was 7 miles & Garmin said it was 6.6 so definitely further than the stated 5.6 miles. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for fabulous views without having to commit to a big climb. Very dog friendly & great going under foot with only a few boggy areas. We had some amazing views that were made even more dramatic due to the low dark cloud.