Planning on hitting this on Monday seeing as all the forests up here are knackered. Can someone give me a guesstimate on how long roughly this route will take?

Is it a 6 hour job or closer to 8?

Should add I’m pretty fit and intend on starting around 7.30am

Which route are you doing? The longest is probably north to skiddaw house from threlkeld, then east out to Mosedale then around caldbeck common linking mine tracks to come back up by dash falls to skiddaw house and back to Keswick. Nowhere near the timings you suggest, probably 4 hours?

Well under five from the top car park on the Skiddaw side, so probably just over five for me from Keswick, and I’m definitely no racing snake.

Took me under 4.5 hours from Keswick and I’m a skinny lad from Lincolnshire who stops to take a lot of pics. You’ll be back in Keswick for lunchtime with an early start. I remember a short stretch of Mosedale being fairly boggy and another short section from Skiddaw House towards the singletrack below Lonscale Fell but otherwise dryish

Agree with people above. Nowhere near 7 hours. We did back of skiddaw, and round Blencathra, then Glenderaterra in 4:40 moving time, so probably 6:52 hours including long cafe stop. < EDIT as I found the total time on strava>

Oh and that time also included going up Skiddaw and down Ullock Pike 😉

Should add I’m pretty fit and intend on starting around 7.30am

If both these are true then you could do the basic Skiddaw loop by 10am without much trouble

I’m following the route off of Fattyres

http://fattyres.co.uk/routes/lake-district/glenderaterra-back-o-skiddaw/

Good to know it’s around 4 hours though. Could be back home for dinner. Thank you all.

Good to know it’s around 4 hours

Ah, about that…

That route bears no resemblance to the one I was thinking of. It goes round neither Skiddaw nor Blencathra. ☺

Interested to hear if it is the route that others are thinking of or not?

Interested to hear if it is the route that others are thinking of or not?

Similar to the route I took although I went from Keswick up to the carpark and rode the track to almost Skiddaw House then into Mosedale rather than along the railway.

You could save some time by buying Skiddaw House and starting from there! Its up at £1.5M…

We’ve done variations on that a few times. 4-5 hours should easily cover it. The loop around the top does feel like it takes forever and is fairly dull.

I’d be tempted to start at Threlkeld – gives a bail out option if the weather turns bad, you’ll be a tiny bit fresher when descending to Keswick and can grab food if needed before pootling back along the railway. Downside is you don’t finish with a decent.

Couple of years back mid winter, we had a cup of tea in Skiddaw house and got fully creeped out and bitten by fleas.
There were loads of walking boots but no no was stopping there.