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About Gowbarrow Fell | Parking Location | OS Map | Current Weather
Made popular by its proximity to Aira Force, a honeypot tourist attraction, Gowbarrow Fell does have some charming views and enough about it to take a detour up there.
Our route was picked because of the new, one-way system of Aira Force. This was put in place during 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic. Having been here before a few times, we wanted to choose the best and easiest cut through of the popular areas without meeting many people. Although, if you haven’t yet seen the immense power and beauty of the falls or the elegance of the ancient trees, we’d highly recommend a route all around this first.
Find out more about Aira Force here:
https://www.thelakedistrict.org/things-to-do/walks/aira-force-loop/
There’s also a tree trail available from the National Trust welcome building for £1 if you’re into your ancient tree spotting!
As we parked up, the vast majority of people were shooting off to the falls, while we made a left turn and walked through some beautiful ferny fields with stunning views of Ullswater. We met a few unperturbed white horses before crossing through the top of Aira Force, over the bridge and left on a stone path up and away from the falls. We carried on this path for quite some time before taking the right fork which started our ascent. There were surprisingly more people walking this fell than we anticipated and we met many tourists and non-walkers climbing this fell as an extension onto their Aira Force outing.
It wasn’t a huge slog but we were happy to have gotten the steeper, stepped bit of the walk out of the way first. We advanced across the stony path and onto Gowbarrow Fell. In a bit of a windy position, we donned our wind-proofs but only stayed long enough to take in the views before taking the path-less-travelled down.
A great path, offering views to the north, we slowly swung around the eastern part of the fell. There was a small, tricky section of path that had started to crumble away but nothing too difficult here. Not being a fan of paths with a steep drop one side, I was seemingly not affected by the slight steepness. Possibly because it was broken up significantly by ferns and twists in the track as we hugged the contours of the mountain.
As the path crept further around the fell, we were once again treated to views of Ullswater. We approached a lovely piece of viewing ground and a memorial seat which would have been a great place to picnic.
From there we carried on our route, with Ullswater now to our left. The scenery gradually grew into woodland as we arrived back at Aira Force. Coming in at the bottom of the area, we needed to follow the one-way system, down near the main car park, before skirting round over a bridge and back up the other side. Watch out for red squirrels, there are plenty about. Also, woodpeckers and an overabundance of small birds are seen during a few minutes’ walk here.
