Walk facts

  • Distance: 100 miles

  • Difficulty: Technicality depends on your route choice, but challenging due to length

  • Start & finish: Ambleside is suggested (but can be any point along the route)

  • Route: Ambleside > Bridgend > Scales > Keswick > Buttermere > Wasdale Head > Boot > Coniston > Ambleside

  • OS maps required: Explorer Series 1:25,000. Sheets NW OL4, NE OL5, SW OL6 & SE OL7.

In your route pack

Written description of the route, including grid references, stages, distances for each stage, landmarks, optional deviations, interesting background facts
Photos of landmarks along the way to help guide you
At-a-glance linear route maps for various stages, to use in conjunction with your OS maps

Buy this walk

Download your PDF route pack for this walk for just £3.

Click the button below to pay via PayPal. (You don’t need to have a PayPal account)

IMPORTANT: When you’ve completed the purchase with PayPal, please click the ‘Adventure Guides UK’ button on the PayPal confirmation screen to come back and download your walk.

You can also download your walk later by clicking the link in the email you’ll receive after your purchase.

Need help with downloading?

These step-by-step instructions should help.  Please contact us if you have any questions.

About the Cumbrian Classic Centurion Walk

Cumbrian Classic Centurion - Stage 4The Cumbrian Classic Centurion Walk is a circular route of over 100 miles, taking in many of the best-known special places and iconic mountains of the Lake District, including its three highest peaks: Scafell, Helvellyn and Skiddaw.

This walk is a challenge, and the object of this adventure is to plan your own journey around the Lakes, within the flexible framework of grid references and stages given in the walk notes. The exact route you plan will suit your individual needs and interests, whether attacking a rocky ridge line en route, or wandering easily along the edge of a tarn.

You can choose your own level of challenge – some walkers will be out to do the walk in a fast time, others might plan their route to include technical challenges, while some might take several trips up to the Lakes to complete their journey.

Completing the Centurion is likely to take around a week, and you could feasibly conquer about forty of the peaks over 2000’ (600m).Cumbrian Classic Centurion - Stage 4-2

Any route that you decide will obviously be a serious undertaking. However well planned, it’s NOT for the inexperienced walker.

The walk notes outline five stages, some of which might take more than one day to complete.

Each stage has a starting point and six grid references that can be visited in order. These are set up on a mountain route card for you to change or use. The walk can start and finish at any point, but I suggest Ambleside as a convenient starting point.

Jon Ginesi

Log your achievement!

I recommend filling in a logbook or blog to capture memories from this classic challenge.

You can get your books signed and verified at The Climbers Shop in Ambleside, where sewn badges are also available.

They also hold the LDWA logbook for the route, so you can add your name and join the hardy few who have taken on the Centurion challenge since 1981.

Winter challenge

You can complete the Centurion at any time of year, but if you choose to tackle it in winter, you’ll find ample ski opportunities and snow/ice gullies to climb on the main peaks. A chance to get out your ice axe and mini skis – if you know how to use them!

Buy & download

Done the walk? Get the certificate!

If you’ve completed this classic challenge walk, mark the occasion with your souvenir certificate of achievement.

You can download your certificate to print at home for just £1.

Buy & download