What’s the ‘classic’ way up Honister if one exists, gonna ride it tomorrow noticed some talk about it from Buttermere up to Keswick but seen in the Fred Whitton it’s done from Keswick down to Buttermere.
Thnx

Harder work from Buttermere side

I’d say the Keswick to Buttermere route is slightly more difficult and longer. I usually ride it the Buttermere side to Keswick, per the Tour of Britain route last year.

The ToB route looked epic so start with that I think though would like to do the Keswick to Buttermere as I’m staying in Stair so can do Whinlatter Newlands & Honister in one shortish ‘family friendly’ loop 🙂

dunno about classic but the best (subjective of course) way to tackle is go straight across it whilst doing the borrowdale bash. We are talking about mtbs here aren’t we? 😐 🙂

That’s Fridays plan of action

If you’re up for it, throw in Fleetwith Pike.

Stair honister, new lands, whinlatter, honister back to stair you get to ride it both ways. Best from Buttermere IMO.

Keswick to Buttermere is steeper at the bottom, Buttermere to Keswick is insanely steep at the top….

Food for thought & pain for the legs thnx 😀

Did both as part of am MTB ride last year, Keswick side felt harder coz it was steep from the start which had you blowing then only slightly eased off, completely opposite on Buttermere side easy start slowly ramped up, no doubt hard work on road gearing but with 22×32 just sit and twiddle.

Route was 1st half of borrowdale bash up honister, fleetwith/warn scale bottoms, up honister, 2nd half of the bash. Tough but best ride of the year.

Tough in terms of technicality D0NK or physical effort (or both)?

On a road bike
Keswick to Honister, fine once you clear the bit at the start which isn’t that bad if your used to lakes riding. (compact)
Not done the other way but the van used to complain near the mine…

Four passes tour of Great Gable is THE best way!

For my preferred road loop out there – starting Cockermouth side as that where I was living. Cockermouth Over Whinlatter to Briathwaite, Round Catbells to Borrowdale, Up honister down to buttermere and over Newlands back on the borrowdale side, then back up to Braithwaite and back over Whinlatter to finish. The climbs are longer but misses the sharp steep finished you get doing them the other way round and Whinlatter is a nice warm up/cool down on the way home.

Did a fun loop from penrith to keswick, over whinlatter, round buttermere, over honister from that side and back to penrith via keswick again. Beautiful ride. The last bit up to the mine from the buttermere side was hard but worth the grunting and gurning!

Grum warnscale is stupidly technical without being too “I will die if I fall” so your upper body gets a fair beating and obviously up honister twice is a lot of pedalling to add on to the bash. So yeah both really.

Well that was fun from cottage in stair up whinlatter down and round to buttermere then up honister through to Keswick & back before 10.30am as family rising
Not sure what is harder the climb up to the mine as the last but is ridiculously steep or the descent down

This thread reminded me of a video I made a while ago, so I uploaded it if anyone’s interested;

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHcXwXzlVyc[/video]