walk level /guidelines

Ramblers.

Ramblers in the UK promotes walking in the countryside, protects rights of way, campaigns for access to open country and defends the beauty of the countryside. This it has been doing over the past 70 years. It is a charity and receives no government funding, which means that members subscriptions are essential if this work is to continue. The walks arranged by the various rambling groups are done on a purely voluntary basis.

Besides the help a subscription to Ramblers brings, other reasons for joining Ramblers are:

to take part in planned walks in the countryside, discover new places and share the enjoyment of the experience with others,
to have the opportunity to make new friends while on the walks,
to get plenty of exercise in pleasant surroundings and so improve one's fitness.

Penrith Group catchment area.

The Penrith Group is in the Lake District Area of Ramblers, (refence LD5), and its membership is taken from a catchment area stretching from Ullswater through the Eden Valley to the Pennines and includes Alston, Appleby, Brough, Dufton, Kirkby Stephen, Kirkoswald, Penrith, Shap and Tebay. It does not include Armathwaite or Ivegill, which are in the Carlisle catchment area.
The post codes of the catchment area for the Penrith Group start with CA9, CA10, CA11, CA16 and CA17.
(If you live outside the catchment area and wish to belong to the Penrith Group, you need to indicate this, when you join Ramblers.)
The walks put on by the group range well beyond the catchment area, stretching throughout Cumbria and into Durham, Northumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Southern Scotland. Weekend trips to Central Scotland have been arranged in the past.To Top

The Penrith Group.

The Penrith Group is an active group in the Lake District area of Ramblers, leading over 6 walks per week in the summer months and about 5 walks per week during the rest of the year. Despite being centred on a fairly small town, the group has about 70% more members and carries out more walks than the Carlisle group, which is centred on Carlisle city with a much larger population some 17 miles to the north.
The group holds most walks on Wednesdays, when 4 and sometimes 5 walks are held, with one walk on a Saturday. In the summer, walks are held on a Thursday evening and some special 'theme' walks are held on a Sunday. Active walkers in the group tend to associate with a particular walking party, based on friendship groupings and walking ability, though some members do swop between walking parties.
Besides leading walks, the group is involved with investigating routes for new and existing paths and reporting obstructions to paths in the area. It also holds social events, such as lunches/dinners and walking trips in other areas of the country .
As you might expect there are many members who work with little publicity behind the scenes, helping with social events, doing the administration, making policy decisions and helping to publicise the group, e.g. writing articles in the local press and running this website.

Brief guide to this web site.

Various facilities on this website need Javascript enabled. Go to Enabling Javascript for step-by-step guides on how to enable Javascript on the latest browsers. Information on security is also included.

To get details of the walks put on by the Penrith Group go to:

Walks' Programme. Besides the basic list of walks, dates and their leaders, a mapping facility shows the approximate location of the region of any walk and provides an indication of the OS map or maps, which is/are needed to navigate the walk. Provision to print out one or more walks' programmes, without images, buttons and page headings is also available. All these extra facilities require Javascript to be enabled.
The walks' programme is organised by and for Ramblers members but new members are always welcome. (Note: prospective members are free to sample two or three walks before deciding if they would like to join.)

Before partaking on a particular walk listed in the programme, new or potential members are advised to read the information on:

Guide lines to walks, which has a copy of the Countryside code, guidance for new walk leaders, advice on how to deal with accidents, how to cope in thunder storms, obstructions to paths, bringing a dog on a walk and on sensible rambling.
Contacting Penrith Group, which gives contact details of walk leaders, walk co-ordinators and the various officials of the Penrith Group. There is also information on joining Ramblers and where to meet before a walk.
Walking Equipment, which gives suggestions on what to wear and carry on a fell walk.
If you need advice on navigation go to Navigation, which gives information on the Ordnance Survey map system and use of compass and GPS.
Advice on avoiding aches and diseases and coping with medical problems, which might be encountered on a walk go to Medical adviceTo Top

Because some walks are changed or a walk's route is unknown when the walks' programme is printed, it is intended to update the website and add notices as more information becomes available. To see if you need to update your printed copy of the walks' programme, note the date of the last update on the Home page and, if this is later than the time you last visited the site, go to

Updates, Notices + Ads, to find out what has changed.

Visitors to the site may like to get a flavour of the walks on offer by viewing a few photographs, taken on walks by members of the Penrith Ramblers. If so, go to

Penrith Ramblers Photos.

Enlargements of thumbnail photos can be viewed singly or in sequence using a slideshow facility, if javascript is enabled. The photos are changed approximately every 4 months. However, past photos are not lost but are stored on the 'fotopic.net' website, to which a link is provided.

For the latest Penrith Ramblers newsletter, go to

News Letter.

Because the Lake District area site now displays the Penrith Ramblers News Letter in pdf format, it is not shown on this web site, so saving duplication. Instead a link to the area web site is provided. Links are also provided to sites, which supply freeware downloads of pdf readers.

Penrith is located near some of the most beautiful areas of England, where they hold their walks.. More information on these areas can be found on ,

The Eden Valley.
The Howgills.

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The Lake District.
The Pennines.
The Yorkshire Dales.

On the pages are thumbnail photos. Clicking on these will cause them to enlarge gradually if Javascript is enabled.

For information on the design of this web site go to:

Web site Management.

Ensuring you get latest data.

Do some of the buttons used to link to the various web pages on this site have a deep blue centre? If so you may have just visited these pages but if you have not, then you will have visited them on a previous occasion, your browser having reloaded them from its cache. This means you may not have the latest web pages. This may be a problem, if you require the latest walks' programme (say) and your version of the programme is out of date. To be sure your pages are the latest versions, you need to REFRESH or RELOAD your browser, so that it calls up the pages from the web rather than from its own cache. If this appears to fail, you can clear the browser cache by going into 'Tools' on the browser tool bar and selecting Preferences - History - Empty Disc Cache (wording may vary between browsers). Beware however that this will remove all your history. With Mozilla Firefox, selecting 'Clear Private Data Now' on closing the browser, ensures that this happens next time you connect. You can also use software which clears the browser's cache (etc.), such as BleachBit (freeware). This is easy to use, once set up.

Printing walks' programme and photos.

Instructions on how to print the Walks' programme in tabular form and how to print Penrith Ramblers photos appear on their respective pages. To print out plain text, just highlight the text you want using your browser and select 'Print'. Alternatively you can select 'Copy' and then in M.S. Word, select 'Paste'.which will enable you to make modifications before printing.

Having problems using the extra facilities?

If you have a slow connection, you may have some problems getting some of the planned extra facilities on this site. For example, if the thumbnail photos for the web page 'Penrith Ramblers Photos' take a long time to be displayed, then downloading the larger versions will take even longer and so you may initially have to resort to selecting photos manually, rather than use the slideshow facility. However all the large photos are eventually downloaded automatically in the background and once this has happened the slideshow should operate normally. (This is because the photos will then be loaded directly from the browser's cache, rather than using the web.)
When using the mapping facility with the Walks' Programme, you may need to wait a while for the maps to appear. The maps are not pre-loaded and only get downloaded, if required.
Internet Explorer does not comply with many of the latest W3C standards but after incorporating code especially for IE, the browser should work without errors. However, the latest version of AOL, which uses Internet Explorer, now produces error messages with this site, even though the site still seems to work. (Incidentally, AOL also produces error messages with its own AOL news bulletins and BBC news bulletins on the web!)
This site has been designed with IE, Opera and Mozilla Firefox in mind, so if you are having problems with another browser, using one these may help. (The web master understands that some features fail with the Safari browser).