Featured run route: around Loughrigg

Jenny with the Loughrigg Fell summit trig point

Loughrigg Fell is a classic, whether you run up it, down it, or around it (but sorry, you can't go through it). Just outside Ambleside, it's a small, friendly summit which offers a bit of everything, from broad, well-surfaced tracks and paths to off-path fell running to tiny scrambles. You can get surprisingly easily lost on Loughrigg if you want to practise your navigation skills, but it's small enough to easily find yourself again! In short, you'll come back to Loughrigg again and again. This run is a great introduction to it, in which we take a loop around the base of the fell from Ambleside, returning along the classic route on Loughrigg Terrace, with elevated views across Grasmere and Rydal Water.

Distance: 11km

Elevation: 269m

Highest point: 193m

Time: 1 - 2 hours

Parking: Any Ambleside car park

Public transport: 555 bus from Kendal/Lancaster or Keswick

Terrain: 24% road, 26% track, 50% path, 0% fell

Route GPX: click here

1. Begin at Zeffirelli's Cinema in Ambleside. Take the small road beside the cinema, to the left of the fish and chip shop, and run past the primary school and Ambleside Parish Centre, into Rothay Park. Continue ahead across the park, playground on the left, to a small metal bridge. Cross this then immediately left cross an older, stone bridge across the Rothay.

2. Over the bridge, cross the cattle grid, right, and turn immediately left, uphill, initially on tarmac. Continue uphill on this track, which soon becomes gravel, and then a wide fell path, passing a few houses and through several gates.

3. Stay always on the most obvious path for 1.7km from the road until arriving at a set of large stepping stone boulders across a beck. Cross these and stay on the path bearing left, ignoring a trod heading right. This path continues around the base of the fell for 800m, mainly downhill, to a gate.

   
   

4. Through this gate the path heads downhill again, on a rocky path edged with trees. Keep following it for 300m to another gate which leads to a junction by a slate-built house. Here turn very sharp right, back through a gate signed Loughrigg Tarn, on a track.

5. Follow the track for 1.2km (staying always on the main track), the tarn soon appearing, until a wide gate which leads to a road. Through the gate, turn right and go uphill on the road.

6. After 600m, at a road junction forking left, leave the road through a gate, right, onto a track. Take this, slightly downhill through trees and curving right, for 300m. At a metal gate, go through and cross a small beck to exit the trees onto the Loughrigg terrace path.

   
   
   

   
   
   

7. At the junction of ways here keep left (along the level path, ignoring the pitched steps rising right). Run now along the terrace, views of Grasmere below to the left. After 700m the path drops slightly and bends right, coming close to a wall. Stay now on this path, with the wall to the left, for 800m, views opening across Rydal Water.

8. As the wall ends, the path drops to run right along the shore of the Water. Keep close to the shore for 500m, then as the path rises away from the water, follow it, and go through the gate ahead.

   
   

9. Now on a wide, wall-enclosed track, continue ahead as the track rises, and then heads downhill, becoming tarmac. Pass the Pelter Bridge car park to the right, and keep ahead to cross a cattle grid. Pelter Bridge is to the left, here, do not cross it. Instead go right, across a second cattle grid, onto the Under Loughrigg road.

10. This quiet lane now leads for 2km back to Ambleside. Arriving back at the junction in Instruction 2, cross the cattle grid, and the bridge over the Rothay, retracing steps through Rothay Park to return to well-earned refreshments in Ambleside.