Every day I hiked, every night I camped, and in-between the mountains gave me what I needed. At home I felt agitated and frustrated, but out walking I was happy and free. It was as if I was tapping into something intrinsic, like an ancestral yearning to b

to every hidden nook and cranny of the Lake District – that heavenly place of wobbly dry stone walls, sweeping ridges, craggy buttresses, towering summits, tumbling streams and glistening lakes.

From iconic giants like Scafell Pike, Blencathra and Helvellyn to dinky humps such as Helm Crag, Latrigg and Castle Crag, walking the Wainwrights gave me an intimate interaction with the Lake District. I ambled lonely valleys, followed dancing becks, glided over sun-drenched ridges and posed triumphantly on craggy summits. It was a memory-forging, happiness-inducing journey – and slowly but surely I neared my final summit.

I walked the final few metres, placed my hands atop Cat Bells’ trig pillar and smiled. I’d made it. Mission accomplished. All 214 Wainwrights climbed in 14 days and 11 hours – the fastest ever solo and selfsupported round. I felt proud. I’d discovered depths of resilience, positivity and determination I didn’t even know I possessed, and I’d overcome all manner of self-doubts and personal demons.

I took a quiet moment of reflection and thought about my favourite quote from Alfred Wainwright: “I was to find… a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world.” In 2020 that world might have been tainted by the ills of reckless, disdainful fly campers, but – from my experience – they hadn’t irrefutably ruined it. It was still a better world.