Wainwrights Wheel - bagging the fells!

Ever since Alfred Wainwright completed the seventh of his journals on the fells of the Lake District, which was published in 1966, the 214 peaks have gone into folklore.

There's romance and intrigue about the names that make up the Wainwright Fells. Dollywaggon Pike, Pavey Ark, Pike O'Stickle, Walla Crag and best of all Blencathra are just some of the names that hint of a magical hinterland where magic, fables and yarns abound. And in many ways that's exactly what the Lake District and its fells are! A place that draws in adventurers and lovers of peaks that challenge the thighs and offer views to draw gasps and admiration.

And thus the challenge to complete the Wainwrights, to bag those iconic 214 fells has taken shape. Or at least, to see how many you can scale.

Of course our poster isn't designed to challenge all to scale every peak but it is there to give account of the peaks. The 'Wheel' works as an alphabetical listing from Allen Crags, all the way round to Yoke. Each fell is listed by its height and graphically represented in terms of a coloured bar, both to represent each fell's proportionate height compared to the highest peak  - Scafell Pike, but also colour coded according to each of Wainwrights journals, which are produced by Frances Lincoln and contain not only the encyclopaedic ascent descriptions and sights described by Alfred Wainwright, but also the beautifully crafted illustrations and his original handwriting - proving his obsessive approach to chronicling these wonderful fells.