A bad year for Wainwrights?

Any accusation that this article only exists because I spent a long time battling to install a charting system into this website’s content management system, is entirely unfounded…

There’s a chart at the top of this page, and it shows some data. It shows how many Wainwright’s I’ve managed to bag since each year, since I did my first one back in 2010 (Kidsty Pike, inadvertently bagged whilst walking the Coast to Coast, in case you’re wondering.)

It was only in 2011 that I really started walking them in earnest, with a reasonable number done each year. Given I lived in London for most of that time, and most of the time had managed just one trip to the Lakes per year, the numbers were never going to be that great. But there are two noticeable years on that chart. Two really bad years for bagging.

2012 and 2016.

There’s a link between those two years. Children.

My son was born in 2012. My daughter in 2016. And in each of those two years I managed a mere five Wainwrights.

Maybe there’s hope for 2017 though. For the year after my son was born I managed an all time best of 17 fells. And now that I live within a relatively easy drive of the Lake District, perhaps next year will be even better.

Here’s hoping.