Good news for aficionados of Wainwright’s guides and the recent BBC series covering some of his walks.
There’s a new series on the way, which will again be fronted by Julia Bradbury, presenter of the first set of four. Filming has been underway in the Lake District this month on new programmes following the Grumpy Old Fellwalker’s revered pictorial guides.
Left: Julia Bradbury on Scafell Pike
There’s no word from the BBC as to which routes will be covered but grough has an inkling that Helm Crag will figure in the series. Why? Well cameraman Janusz Ostrowski has issued a distraught plea for the return of a walking stick he lost during filming near the said crag. He left the distinctive wooden stick leaning against a wall at the fork in the path where the Easedale Tarn track leaves the Helm Crag path.
When he returned to pick it up, it had gone. Janusz thinks whoever took the stick would have assumed it was abandoned, but he has great sentimental attachment to it. If you know where it might be, email us here at grough and we’ll try and reunite it with the film-maker. It is described as having a rubber ferrule at its base, pushed over an existing worn-out one.
The original series of Wainwright’s Walks was first shown on BBC4 early this year and repeated on BBC2, where it gained an audience of two million by the final episode, in which Julia panted her way to the top of England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike.
The presenter also summited Haystacks, where Alfred Wainwright’s ashes are scattered; she scaled Sharp Edge on Blencathra, a grade-one scramble, and tackled the more modest Castle Crag in Borrowdale.
The series was screened to coincide with the centenary of the birth of Alfred Wainwright, who devoted virtually the whole of his spare time to the production of his hand-drawn and written fellwalking guides.
Julia Bradbury, who co-presents BBC’s Watchdog, has obviously been bitten by the mountaineering bug.
Filming of Julia's climb on the Old Man of Stoer
She has also made Outdoor Britain: Climbing, in which she overcomes her fear of heights to climb The Old Man of Stoer sea stack, Crackstone Rib, a severe-graded climb in the Llanberis Pass and Commando Ridge, a sea cliff on Cornwall’s north coast. Outdoor Britain: Climbing is due for broadcast in either July or August.
The second series of Wainwright’s Walks should also be transmitted this year.
