Cat Bells · Catbells

About Cat Bells

Cat Bells rises from the western shore of Derwentwater within about 5 km of Keswick, and is among the most walked fells in the Lake District. Its shape does much of the work: visitors looking across from Friars' Crag on the far side of the lake frequently decide on the spot to climb it.

Alfred Wainwright wrote of it as a family fell where grandmothers and infants could go up together, describing its shapely top as catching the eye. At 451 metres it is a Wainwright, Birkett and Trail 100 summit.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Cat Bells (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

General position for England — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in England · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise

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Sunset

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Daylight

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Civil twilight ends

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Computed astronomically for 54.568, -3.171. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is rock. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method

obvious summit

Record revised

05-Jan-20

Drop measured from

NY244191 · 364 m

Classification history: Added to Trail 100 list Jan 2020.

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

One waymarked long-distance route runs within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Cat Bells is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Dale Head (754 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 364 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks