Blencathra

Sharp Edge is the route everyone has heard of, and it starts at Scales on the A66, not in Threlkeld. There is a small free car park beside the White Horse Inn and a lay-by on the main road. Buses do not stop at Scales. The X4 and X5 between Keswick and Penrith stop at the Horse and Farrier in Threlkeld, about two miles west.

Sharp Edge

From Scales a path curls round Scales Fell and up the Glenderamackin to Scales Tarn, a small round tarn under the crags, and Sharp Edge rises straight out of it. The crest runs for about 300 metres and in places is barely a metre wide. Two thirds of the way along comes the awkward move, a sloping slab of smooth rock that plenty of people cross sitting down. Then you climb steep rock up Foule Crag onto the summit plateau. This is scrambling, and once you are on the edge there is no easy way off.

Threlkeld sits under the south face, where a row of ridges climbs to the top. Hall's Fell finishes at the summit on a rocky crest with easy scrambling. Scales Fell and the long grass slope of Blease Fell need no hands.

The top, Hallsfell Top, has a concrete trig ring on the lip of the south face. Below you are the Vale of Keswick and the central fells, and on exceptional days you can pick out the Mourne Mountains in County Down. The other name, Saddleback, comes from the dip in the skyline seen from the Penrith side. On the saddle north of the summit ridge a large cross of white stones lies flat in the grass. Harold Robinson of Threlkeld made it bigger after the Second World War.