Haystacks Is Favourite Wainwright Walk

Wainwright can rest easy knowing that his own favourite walk up Haystacks has just been voted the number one ever walk by the author by visitors to the Cumbria Tourist Board's Go Lakes web site.

The modest 1960-foot summit was the legendary guide book writer's all-time favourite and it was on Haystacks that his ashes were scattered after his death in 1991 following a request in the closing paragraphs of his book, Memoirs of a Fell Wanderer:

"This book is not a personal lament for the end of fellwalking and the end of active life, but a thanksgiving for the countless blessings that have been mine in the last 80 years.

"All I ask for, at the end, is a last long resting place by the side of Innominate Tarn on Haystacks, where the water gently laps the gravely shore and the heath blooms and Pillar and Gable keep unfailing watch.

"A quiet place, a lonely place, I shall go to it, for the last time and be carried: someone who knew me in life will take me and empty me out of a little box and leave me there alone.

"And if you dear reader, should get a bit of grit in your boot as you are crossing Haystacks in the years to come, please treat it with respect. It might be me…"

The online poll was held to mark the anniversary of the publication of his first ever walking guide, A Pictorial Guide to The Eastern Fells, which first appeared 50 years ago and Eric Robson, chairman of the Wainwright Society commented: '"It is fitting legacy to Wainwright that Haystacks - where he finally rested for good - is considered the most special walk in this most special of walking places. Wainwright was priest and poet in his own blunt way but the love he had for the hills is a devotion shared by many.  Walking a Wainwright has to rank in everybody's top ten of things to do."

The top three walks were Haystacks which got 32% of the votes, Blencathra with 20% and Bowfell with 14%.