England
Honister Slate Mine
A via ferrata bolted to slate cliffs above a pass where miners once clung.
The via ferrata bolts are hammered into slate faces where miners once roped themselves to the cliff, and the pass below drops away into cloud. Honister is England's last working slate mine — and the only one that straps visitors to the cliff face for the view.
Honister Pass, at 356 metres, links Borrowdale to Buttermere over one of the Lake District's most dramatic roads — gradients touching 25%, no barriers, sheep on the tarmac. The mine has worked Westmorland green slate since the seventeenth century, from underground seams and the exposed faces of Fleetwith Pike, and its via ferrata follows the original miners' path up the cliff: rungs, ladders and wire bridges clipped to the rock with hundreds of metres of Lakeland air beneath your boots. Underground tours enter hand-cut tunnels and cathedral-sized caverns by headtorch, guided by people who know every vein and fault, and the mine's tracks continue to Fleetwith Pike's summit with views south to Great Gable and north across Buttermere. The shop sells slate cut and finished where it was quarried.
Solo
The via ferrata narrows every thought to the next handhold and the drop below — summit Fleetwith Pike alone and the view earns every clip and rung.
Friends
Clip on together and the shared exposure — wire bridges, cliff face, drop — forges the kind of bond only genuine height can.
- The cliff-bolted via ferrata hangs you over hundreds of metres of Lakeland air.
- Green slate has come out of this mountain since the 1600s.
- Honister Pass touches 25% gradients with no barriers and sheep on the road.
- Underground tours enter hand-cut caverns in headtorch darkness.
Herdwick lamb slow-roasted in Borrowdale, the breed that built these fells.
Sticky toffee pudding dense enough to anchor you to the chair.
Iten
Kenya
Lean runners slice through thin air at 2,400 metres on the escarpment where champions are made.
Pico do Fogo
Cape Verde
Loose black scree all the way to a steaming crater rim 2,829 metres above the Atlantic.
Serra dos Órgãos
Brazil
Brazilian climbing began here in 1912, on a human pyramid, with pitons the blacksmith forged himself.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Tanzania
Five climates stack between the coffee farms and the ice at 5,895 metres.
Newquay
England
Atlantic swells smash into seven beaches at the modern home of British surfing.
Brighton
England
Regency excess meets punk rebellion on a pebble beach that never sleeps.
Bristol
England
Street art erupts from harbour walls where Banksy's ghost still prowls.
Heptonstall
England
Blackened millstone grit above the valley where Sylvia Plath sleeps under the rain.