going up the lakes for the Fred Whitton and staying on for a week afterwards.

I won’t have the time for any all day epics bar the FW as I’m up there with wife and small child, but are there any good MTB descents or part loops that can be accessed by road + a bit of climbing.

Top of Honister down the bash route.

The car park on the way to Lonscale Fell cuts out a fair bit of climbing on the way to Skiddaw. Likewise the car park halfway up Walna Scar.

Lattrig car park to Keswick.

Upside – easy uplift, ~250m of vertical, easy and blindlingly fast singletrack early on, huge potential for air on the fire road water bars.

Downside – walkers, the singletrack is often blind with shrubs on both sides so you can’t go flat out, some/lots of very fast fire road with huge consequences for minimal technical thrill.

great dun fell to the golf balls. then off the front of it.

great dun fell to the golf balls. then off the front of it.

Hardly uplift 😯 Going steady on a road bike it took me 45 mins to get to the top.

Warnscale is the one- which I think is what mikewsmith is on about.

You park at the Honsiter Slate Mine car park, ride up a fire road for about 3/4 of a mile then descend on lovely technical singletrack. I think you’ll enjoy it, it’s hard but 100% rideable. There’s even a jump park at the top. Once you’re at the bottom it’s a 15-20 minute pedal up the road to the car-

I should add, can be an A-B route as I could get dropped off and picked up somewhere else.

get dropped at kirkstile inn, hike up onto high street and choose your descent.

You can also get a road lift to the top of the other bit as well then meet your family at the bottom for up lift to the next bit

I should add, can be an A-B route as I could get dropped off and picked up somewhere else.

Well I guess you could be really cheeky and do a ABCDEF route
A drop at watendlath
B pick up at rosthwaite
C drop off top of honister
D Pick up at buttermere
E top of honister
F pick up at Kitchen Bay on Derwent
🙂

Yep both sides are good from Honister.

get dropped at kirkstile inn, hike up onto high street and choose your descent.

http://kirkstile.com/
Unless there is another Kirkstile inn it’s a melon farming long way in from Loweswater to High Street.

and anyone uplifting Latrigg needs their bike taken off them….

kirkstone presumably?

What sort of length timewise are we talking? Warnscale will take a solo rider about 2 hours, if that.

If you have more time then almost anything else I can think of turns into a loop, or a very long drive around to pick you up.

great dun fell to the golf balls. then off the front of it.

Its not a legal road, it becomes bridleway only (despite the tarmac) at about 300m.

However, if you do get up, there’s an awesome un-mapped descent from Silverband Mine which was used in the North Pennines MTB Marathon.

Lazy get

I’m doing the Fred Whitton on the sunday. I probably won’t want to see another bike all week.

TBH if you’ve got a couple of hours, just get dropped up at Moor Top in Grizedale, and you can have a decent BW loop while wife and nipper play at the visitor centre down below and eat ice cream.

None of the options above are very good either for you or the driver, even if they save a couple of hundred metres of ascent.

None of the options above are very good either for you or the driver

I’d say Warnscale is perfect- by being picked up at the bottom you save 3/4 of the climb, the driver need only drive 2 miles down the hill to pick him up and they can pop into the visitor centre at the mine while they wait, or go for a gentle walk around Buttermere.

Troutebeck to Ambleside then round loughrigg
Knife fold, oxenfell, hodge close etc etc finish in Ambleside
Claife heights finish in Grizedale
Haweswater to staveley

BTW where are you staying?

yes kirkstone………doh!

BTW where are you staying?

booking a cottage just outside ambleside in the morning.

all booked up, and after a bit of strava snooping seems to be in a perfect spot.

a strava segment called ‘secret singletrack‘ comes off the hill about 200yds down the road…