Graystones is a fell

Fell

“Fell” is a word used to refer to mountains, or certain types of mountainous landscape, in Scandinavia, the Isle of Man, and parts of northern England.- Etymology :...

 in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

. It lies in the North Western Fells

North Western Fells

The North Western Fells are a group of hills in the English Lake District. Including such favourites as Catbells and Grisedale Pike, they occupy an oval area beneath the Buttermere and Borrowdale valley systems...

 region and is one of the peaks on the ridge which encircles the valley of Aiken Beck.

Name

According to Alfred Wainwright

Alfred Wainwright

Alfred Wainwright MBE was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the...

 the name Graystones properly refers only to the summit, but he then chose to apply it to the whole fell in his influential Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells

Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells

A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells is a series of seven books by A. Wainwright, detailing the fells of the Lake District in northwest England...

. Wainwright stated that the hill is correctly known as Kirk Fell, not to be confused with Kirk Fell

Kirk Fell

Kirk Fell is a fell in the Western part of the English Lake District. It is situated between Great Gable and Pillar on the long ring of fells surrounding the valley of Ennerdale, and also stands over Wasdale to the south...

 in Wasdale

Wasdale

Wasdale is a valley and civil parish in the western part of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. The River Irt flows through the valley to its estuary at Ravenglass. A large part of the main valley floor is occupied by Wastwater, the deepest lake in England...

. Some guidebooks however take Graystones to be the eastern summit and Kirk Fell the western top at 1,437 ft. This view is reinforced by the placing of the names on the Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...

 1:25000 series map.

Topography

The North Western Fells occupy the area between the rivers Derwent and Cocker, a broadly oval swathe of hilly country, elongated on a north-south axis. Two roads cross from east to west, dividing the fells into three convenient groups. The most northerly sector, rising between Whinlatter Pass

Whinlatter Pass

The Whinlatter Pass is a mountain pass in the English Lake District. It is located on the B5292 road linking Braithwaite, to the west of Keswick, with High Lorton to the south of Cockermouth....

 and the Vale of Embleton, includes Graystones.

The highest ground in this northern sector lies on a ridge running from the Vale of Lorton in the west to the shore of Bassenthwaite Lake

Bassenthwaite Lake

Bassenthwaite Lake is one of the largest water bodies in the English Lake District. It is long and narrow, approximately long and wide, but is also extremely shallow, with a maximum depth of about ....

 in the east. In this direction the fells on the ridge are Graystones, Broom Fell

Broom Fell

Broom Fell is a small hill in the English Lake District. It lies on a ridge connecting Lord's Seat and Graystones, but is rarely climbed. Alfred Wainwright did however accord it the status of a separate fell in his influential guidebook series, the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland...

, Lord's Seat

Lord's Seat

Lord's Seat is a fell in the English Lake District. It is the highest of the group of hills north of Whinlatter Pass in the North Western Fells. The slopes of Lord's Seat are extensively forested.-Topography:...

 and Barf

Barf (Lake District)

Barf is a fell in the north-western Lake District in Cumbria, UK. It stands on the south-western shore of Bassenthwaite Lake. Barf is well known for a whitewashed pillar of rock on the lower slopes, the so-called "Bishop's Rock" or "Bishop of Barf"....

. Whinlatter

Whinlatter

Whinlatter is a small fell in the north west of the English Lake District, just north of the Whinlatter Pass. It is easily climbed from the top of the Whinlatter Pass, through the Forestry Commission plantations. The Whinlatter Visitor's Centre, a popular tourist attraction, is on the south side of...

 is an outlier to the south.

Gentle grassy slopes rise up from the wide Vale of Lorton to the western (Kirk Fell) top. A little to the east across a slight depression is Graystones summit. The ridge then narrows to cross the long saddle of Widow Hause en route for Broom Fell. To the south of the fell are Blaze Beck and its tributary, Aiken Beck. These are joined by Sware Gill, a small stream running down from the col

Mountain pass

A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route...

 between Kirk Fell and Graystones. The south eastern slopes of the fell and the entire southern flank of Widow Hause are dressed with the conifers of the Darling How Plantation. Deep within the woods is Spout Force, a fine waterfall on Aiken Beck.

The northern slopes run slowly down towards Embleton High Common and the vast morass of Wythop Moss. To the north west is Harrot (958 ft), a good viewpoint for Lorton and Cockermouth

Cockermouth

-History:The Romans created a fort at Derventio, now the adjoining village of Papcastle, to protect the river crossing, which had become located on a major route for troops heading towards Hadrian's Wall....

.

Geology

The predominant rock is the Ordovician

Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six of the Paleozoic Era, and covers the time between 488.3±1.7 to 443.7±1.5 million years ago . It follows the Cambrian Period and is followed by the Silurian Period...

 Kirkstile Formation of laminated siltstone

Siltstone

Siltstone is a sedimentary rock which has a grain size in the silt range, finer than sandstone and coarser than claystones.- Description :As its name implies, it is primarily composed of silt sized particles, defined as grains 1/16 - 1/256 mm or 4 to 8 on the Krumbein phi scale...

 and mudstone. The southern slopes show evidence of the greywacke

Greywacke

Greywacke or Graywacke is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness, dark color, and poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or lithic fragments set in a compact, clay-fine matrix. It is a texturally immature sedimentary rock generally found...

 sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 turbidities of the Loweswater Formation. There are also small intrusions of lamprophyre

Lamprophyre

Lamprophyres are uncommon, small volume ultrapotassic igneous rocks primarily occurring as dikes, lopoliths, laccoliths, stocks and small intrusions...

.

Summit and view

Graystones summit is grassy, the highest point marked by a slight upthrust in the underlying rock. It lies within a few yards of the end of the wall rising from Widow Hause. A cairn

Cairn

Cairn is a term used mainly in the English-speaking world for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the or . Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas...

 has been erected on the western slopes of Kirk Fell.

The slopes are too shallow to give any remarkable view, but the Loweswater Fells and the tops surrounding Coledale Hause can all be seen. More distant there are glimpses of Skiddaw

Skiddaw

Skiddaw is a mountain in the Lake District National Park in England. With a summit at 931 m above sea level it is the fourth highest mountain in England. It lies just north of the town of Keswick, Cumbria, and dominates the skyline in this part of the northern lakes...

 and Helvellyn

Helvellyn

Helvellyn is a mountain in the English Lake District, the apex of the Eastern Fells. At above sea level, it is the third highest peak in both the Lake District and England...

, together with a panorama of the Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

coast.

Ascents

The north western approach from Armaside is via Harrot and Kirk Fell. From the north Tom Rudd Beck can be followed from Embleton. The shortest route is from Scawgill Bridge on the Whinlatter Pass road, following the remains of walls and fences direct to the summit.