Swinside

Location

NE Lakes - N of Crummock Water

Details

A beautiful site that can provide classic scenic Lakes flying. Works best in W to NW winds, but can be flown OK in the more limiting WSW winds. Can sea breeze early, but will continue working although with more restricted lift.

Site Officer

Steve Giles : 01768 780297

Postcode for Sat Nav Systems (read the Health Warning!)

CA13 9UD

Millbeck. This house is half a mile SW of the Swinside parking area. From here you need to drive north 0.2 miles to the next road junction. Turn right here and drive up this road for just under half a mile. The car parking area is just after the gate going north.

Getting There

From Keswick take the B5292 off the A66 and head for Whinlatter Pass. Once over the Pass, and after 1 km, turn left onto the single-track road. Follow this round into the Lorton Valley and again turn left at the only junction. Drive through the first fell gate and descend to the parking area just before the second fell gate (and just before Hopebeck Farm) (grid ref NY 169242).

Getting to takeoff

There is open fell access all the way up to the top of the fell and pilots may take off and land anywhere on this fellside above the road. Make sure that you stay south of the fence shown on the map.

Take off is almost directly above the car park, so the walk up is hard. The best way (only obvious when you walk down) is to walk along the track SSE from the car park for around 100 metres. Look for 2 runnels going directly up the fell (see photo). Take the right hand runnel, after inspecting the landing area, and walk directly up the fell. Towards the top of the runnel (as seen in the photo) look closely for an indistinct track on the left going diagonally up the fell. This will take you steadily up although it peters out near the top. Get above the heather beds to find the grassy takeoff.

XC potential

Opportunities for XC flying and exploring up and down the Lorton and Buttermere valleys are limitless.

Permission to use site

N/A (gained on behalf of club members by the Northern Sites Officer)

IMPORTANT - Restrictions on use

Access to take off is from the parking area at the foot of the fell. DO NOT use any other route onto the fell as there is not permission to do so. Take off and land only on the open fell. Do not, under any circumstances, land in the fields below the road; these are very sensitive.

Paragliding

A steep carry up with limited landing areas on the fellside.

Hang Gliding

Not suitable due to big steep carry up and lack of suitable landing areas.

Additional Safety Notes

Take care in freshening winds as being blown back is not an option and there are limited escape areas if this happens. Inexperienced pilots should take care on steep fellside landing.

Resources

Don't click on flight logs, download to your PC first (right click and 'Save Link As')

Type	Click to Follow Link	Notes
Google Earth - Car Park
Google Street View - Parking		The parking area at Swinside

Follow the links for further details of a site. For flights you will probably need to right click and save the link to your PC before opening Google Earth.
Google Earth links rely on Google Earth being installed on your system. Google Earth provides pan and tilt faciity. You can also upload your flights to GE - use GPS Dump (Links Page) to convert a variety of GPS file formats to a GE kml file
Flash Earth is an alternative to Google Earth but provides a top down view only. To view in Flash Earth, click on the instruction text to clear it - the cross is the spot

Local Information

Pubs

Nearest pubs to the site - for post flying debriefing only!

No pub details are available for this site. Send your recommendations to the webmaster.

 

A selection of photos showing key aspects of the site. If you have a good photo showing take off and landing areas, then send it to the webmaster. Aerial shots showing the landing area are especially welcome.

The car parking at Swinside is just by the lower gate on the fell. Park tidily as it's a bit cramped and it's used by walkers

An aerial view of the Swinside area looking S. The Swinside ridge is in the centre left with the wall running up it. You can see that there is a limited grass area between the wall and the bracken line. You must land on the open fell on this site, not in the fields. Photo reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner, Andrew McMahon. More pictures can be found on his web site.

Looking down to landing which is in the region of the tent - mainly to the left. It does slope.

The landing area looking SSE from just in front of the tent in the previous view

At take off looking NW. It helps to get above the heather!

From the car park walk along the track past the landing area. You need to walk up the right hand of these 2 runnels. As you walk up look carefully for a track on the left traversing diagonally up the fell

 

Site Records

This page shows records for this site. Some of the older records are not very detailed. More recent records may have an igc file available You can right click and download this to your PC. You can then use IGC Flight replay to view the flight.

Paragliding

FAI Triangle
Distance :	38.0km approx
Date :	1999
Pilot :	Patrick Holmes
Open Distance XC
Distance :	46.0km
Date :	Summer of 1999
Pilot :	Burkitt Rudd
Notes :	This flight went across the lakes using sea breeze convergence over Grasmere finally landing scarily between two large sets of powerlines next to the A6 north east of Selside.

Hang Gliding

No records for this site