The Western Fells offer widely diverse scenery and popular resorts such as Buttermere and Wasdale Head. They include fine peaks such as Pillar and Great Gable that rise close to 3,000 feet. There is also the fascinating Haystacks (where Wainwright asked that his ashes be scattered) and valley and lake scenery of the very best vintage.
The Pictorial Guides by A. Wainwright, written half a century ago, have been treasured by generations of walkers. This edition of The Western Fells is freshly reproduced from Wainwright's original hand-drawn pages.
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. He described these as his 'love letters' to the Lakeland Fells and at the end of the first, The Eastern Fells, he wrote about what the mountains had come to mean to him: