Grey Knotts
3 classifications here — Birkett, Synge and Fellranger — belong to lists OpenFell holds only part of, so they have no list page. See how far the coverage goes.

- Height
- 697 m · 2,287 ft
- Prominence
- 16 m
- Grid reference
- NY 21730 12566
- Coordinates
- 54.50236, -3.21019
- County / area
- Cumberland
- Region
- Lake District C&W
- OS Landranger
- 89 90
- OS Explorer
- OL4S
- Summit feature
- cairn on outcrop on W top
- Key col
- NY216122 (681 m)
About Grey Knotts
Grey Knotts lies a kilometre south of the B5289 where it crosses Honister Pass, and is clearly seen from mid-Borrowdale where it rises above Seatoller. At 697 metres it forms part of a ridge climbing from the woodland behind Seatoller and running south-west then south for four kilometres to Great Gable.
Strictly the name belongs only to the summit rocks; Ordnance Survey maps record the wider high ground here as Seatoller Fell, but the fell as a whole has come to be called Grey Knotts.
Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Grey Knotts (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.
Access rights here
Conditional Right to roam: Right to roam only on mapped CRoW open access land.
Permission needed Wild camping: Needs the landowner's permission — the Dartmoor commons are the only exception in England.
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
- —
- Sunset
- —
- Daylight
- —
- Civil twilight ends
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Computed astronomically for 54.502, -3.210. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.
Summit weather live
Loading forecast for the summit (697 m)…
Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).
Finding the summit
outcrop 155m ENE at NY 21876 12581 is as high and OS bolt and cairn 45m NE of this at NY 21914 12615 is lower.
The recorded summit point is cairn on outcrop on W top. That distinction matters on broad or flat tops, where the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.
- Survey method
- Abney level
- Record revised
- 15-Aug-12
- Drop measured from
- NY216122 · 681 m
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 | Total length | From summit |
|---|---|---|
| Coast to Coast Walk | 303 km | over the top |
Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.
Which hill this one belongs to
Grey Knotts is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Great Gable (899 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 681 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
| Peak | Height | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Brandreth | 715 m | 0.7 km |
| Base Brown | 646 m | 1.4 km |
| Honister Crag | 634 m | 1.7 km |
| Green Gable | 799.9 m | 1.9 km |
| Fleetwith Pike | 648.9 m | 2 km |
| Great Gable | 898.8 m | 2.3 km |