Great Mell Fell

Great Mell Fell rises alone out of marshy farmland north of Ullswater, a smooth rounded hill with no crags at all. The rock explains the shape. It is made of Mell Fell Conglomerate, a reddish pebbly sedimentary rock around 375 million years old, found almost nowhere else among the fells, and boulders of it lie on the slopes and in the becks.

The usual parking is a small muddy pull-in at the end of a rough lane by Brownrigg Farm (NY 407 246), on the minor road between Matterdale End and the A66. It holds only three or four cars. A track leads through two gates into woodland, then a path forks right and climbs round the fell through bracken and grass to the top. Out and back it is about 3.5 km with 270 m of ascent. The eastern ridge from the south-east corner is the gentler way up, and the western end is steep but grassy. There is also access from just south of Troutbeck on the A5091, along the old rifle range.

The whole fell is National Trust land and open access. The range ran from the 1890s into the 1950s, and walkers were kept off while it was in use. Spent .303 rounds still turn up in the soil of the butts.

Oak, rowan and birch cover the lower slopes, and higher up there are larches and pines bent by the wind. The summit is a low mound marked on the OS map as a tumulus, probably a Bronze Age burial, with a cairn beside it. Blencathra and the Dodds fill the view west, and to the south you look over Ullswater to the Eastern and Far Eastern Fells as far as Red Screes. East, the Eden Valley leads the eye to the north Pennines.