Pennine Areas

The Pennines cover a huge area of northern England and so for the purposes of this site I have broken them down into 9 separate areas which are, from south to north as follows:

1 - The Peak District almost exactly matches the extent of the Peak District National Park.

2 - The South Pennines covers the area from the north of the Peak District to the southern fringes of the Yorkshire Dales. This area is bounded to the west by the Forest of Rossendale and West Pennine Moors.

3 - The West Pennine Moors (including the Forest of Rossendale) is a western spur of the main Pennine chain. I have taken this area to be those moors west of the Rochdale Canal and south of the Cliviger Gorge.

4 - The Bowland & Pendle moors are another more distant western spur of the main Pennine chain, for the purposes of this site this area matches almost exactly the area of the Forest of Bowland AONB with the addition of Weets Hill above Barnoldswick.

5 - The Nidderdale & Washburn area fairly closely matches the extent of the Nidderdale AONB. The border between the Nidderdale AONB and the Yorkshire Dales National Park is geographically the least defined between all the Pennine areas.

6 - The Yorkshire Dales matches the extent of the Yorkshire Dales National Park with the addition of Middleton Fell and Casterton Fell in Lunesdale and Wild Boar Fell in Mallerstang. For this site I've also extended the Yorkshire Dales north to the A66 so as to include fells such as Nine Standards Rigg. The southern half of the Howgill Fells is within the National Park boundary but it is such a distinct place I thought it was worthy of having a section to itself.

7 - The Howgills & Westmorland area includes the whole of the Howgill Fells as well as the Westmorland limestone plateau to the north. Both of these areas are well to the west of the main Pennine watershed and provide a high level link between the Pennines and the Lakeland mountains.

8 - The North Pennines is the area that starts from the A66 and heads north up to and including Hadrian's Wall. This area accords fairly closely to the North Pennines AONB with the exception of Hadrian's Wall which is within the Northumerland National Park.

9 - The Cheviots include the moors of Kielder Forest Park, the Simonside Hills as well as the Cheviots themselves.

Perhaps this website should more accurately be called 'My Pennines & Cheviots'. The Pennines are usually taken to start in Staffordshire and work their way north before coming to an end at Hadrian's Wall and the Tyne Gap. The Kielder Moors and the Cheviots are usually held to be more closely related to the Southern Uplands of Scotland.

I've included the Cheviots for two reasons, firstly because the Pennine Way itself runs the length of the Cheviots to its conclusion at Kirk Yetholm and secondly because I think that while the main watershed does continue north into the Southern Uplands the Cheviots do in fact mark a natural continuation of the Pennine chain in England.

I know not everyone will agree with the divisions above and there are clearly some areas that are much larger than others. I was tempted to break the Yorkshire Dales in particular into smaller areas but I thought this would make things too complicated.