Greenside Mine and Glenridding Beck Circular Stroll
An easy circular walk taking in the Glenridding valley to Greenside Mine and back along the opposite bank, giving wonderful views over the village and teasing the walker with glimpses of the high hills around.
The village of Glenridding is a popular starting point for numerous walks including Striding and Swirral Edges of Helvellyn. It is also very busy with tourists especially on summer weekends.
Many of the buildings around Greenside mine belong to climbing clubs, and one is the Helvellyn Youth Hostel.
Greenside Mine produced over a million tons of galena for smelting into lead. Perhaps its biggest claim to fame are the experiments of Operation Orpheus held in the mine during the height of the Cold War. Two large conventional explosions were carried out to ascertain whether it was possible to obscure an underground nuclear explosion from being detected by the other signatories to the Test Ban Treaty.
There is parking in the centre of Glenridding in the Lake District National Park Authority pay and display car park and at the Ullswater Steamers car park, where cheap rates in the winter months may be preferable.
The work we do on this web site, both researching and writing up walks, takes a lot of our time but doesn't make us a great deal of money. The main way we fund this work is by selling our walks as PDFs for printing. Please use the "Buy walk in Adobe/PDF format to print or for your phone or tablet" link on the walk page to do that.
If you have already purchased the walk then you if you are logged in you can find it in your rucksack (link top right on any page) in a format suitable for printing.
Thank you for your support
Paul and Beth
Greenside Mine
- Maps:
50K: 90
25K: OL5
- Start:
- NY386170 (get directions via Google Maps)
- Near to:
- Ambleside, Glenridding/Patterdale, Penrith, Ullswater
- Tags:
- circular, mining
- Distance:
- 5.5km (3.4 miles)
- Ascent:
- 219m
- Min. time:
- 1 hrs 28 mins
- View in 3-D:
-
- Terrain:
- 2 - rough
- Bog Factor:
- 1 - none
- Tech Diff:
- 1 - easy
Some road walking, rough paths and tracks. - Dog issues:
- None
Purchases:
Buy walk in Adobe/PDF format to print or for your phone or tablet
Buy route for your GPS
Walk height profile
note that gradients are usually grossly exaggerated
Route Description
The walk starts at Glenridding Beck bridge beside the village shops. Bear right to the one way system around the village greenspace. Turn left into Greenside Lane, signposted to Gillside Farm and Helvellyn Youth Hostel. It also has a 6'6" restriction.
Follow the lane past the Travellers Rest Inn, continue round to the right in front of the grit box and bench. Shortly after bear left, the road climbs to and passes in front of a row of cottages.
Greenside Road, Glenridding
Birkhouse Moor
Cross the cattle grid and continue on the rough metalled track. After a while it changes to concrete. Reaching the mine buildings, bear right to the YHA and bunkhouse parking area. At the end, bear right following the footpath signs. Then bear left onto a track signposted "Red Tarn and Helvellyn". Bear left again to the gated wooden footbridge.
Greenside Road, Glenridding
Glenridding Beck Bridge, above Greenside Mine
Over the bridge, and turn left onto a rough path traversing along the hillside. When the path splits the higher is wider and keeps height, the lower undulates some. Keep on the higher track for now.
The slopes above you are mainly grass and bracken. After a while notice the small boulder with a juniper bush hat.
Continue traversing the hillside.
Juniper bush hat
Heading down to Gillside
Before reaching Mires Beck the path appears to be blocked by a low wall. Bear left in front of the wall to drop down to the lower path alongside the enclosure wall. Now follow this path to the gate above Gillside Farm, go through the gate onto the initially stone pitched path dropping down to the gravelled track.
Follow the track, and then road past Gillside camp site, over the bridge and back to the junction with Greenside Road.
Bear right back into the village.
Rattlebeck Bridge to Gillside, Glenridding
If you like this walk then why not try one of our other nearby walks:
Unless otherwise stated the text in this walk is the copyright of Hug Solutions Ltd trading as The Hug and the photographs are the copyright of Elizabeth Oldham. Hill data is derived from Database of British and Irish hills which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Maps contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011 and paths © OpenStreetMap Contributors,CC-BY-SA, 2011