Saturday 1 July 2000

Lank Rigg

Lank Rigg
Height: 541m (1,775ft)
Prominence: 111m (364ft)
Region: Western Fells
Classifications: HuMP, Dewey, Wainwright, Birkett
Summit feature: Trig pillar, cairn & treasure!
Times climbed: 2
Related trip reports:
Grike, Crag Fell & Lank Rigg - 24/03/2017
Grike, Crag Fell & Lank Rigg - 28/03/2015
The trig pillar looking towards the Pillar range
What Wainwright said:

"This is a fell most visitors have never heard of and few know sufficiently well to recognise it on sight. Lank Rigg is an outsider, beyond the accepted limits of Lakeland, too remote to bother about. A column on the summit shows that the Ordnance men have a regard for the place. And Lank Rigg is, after all, within the Lake District National Park boundary".

Lank Rigg is a sprawling hill with gentle grassy slopes that stands to the south of Ennerdale in the remote Western Fells.

Lank Rigg carries the remains of an ancient settlement with a tumulus near the summit and various enclosures and cairns near Tongue Bank. These are marked as "cairn", "settlement" and "homestead" on Ordnance Survey maps.

To mark the completion of his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, Alfred Wainwright buried a two-shilling (now ten pence) piece under a stone at the summit. He made mention of this in the last volume so that the first reader on the fell could collect the prize. It was, as he said, "a reckless thing to do". It was claimed the very day after publication. Visitors to the summit may still occasionally find coins hidden there by generous fellwalkers in memory of Wainwright's act.

The highest point bears an Ordnance Survey triangulation column. The Lakeland view is uninspiring.

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