I first heard about Abraham’s Tea Round a few years ago. It’s a 46km route, with 3500m of elevation bagging Cat Bells, Robinson, High Stile, Red Pike, Whiteless Pike, Hobcarton Crag, Grisedale Pike, Eel Crag, Sail, Causey Pike, Rowling End and Barrow. You can do them in any order that you like and it used to be the case that when you finished, at Abraham’s Cafe, you were rewarded with a cup of tea. The cafe doesn’t exist anymore but the reward is now a badge and a buff from George Fisher, which suits me as I’m not much of a tea drinker. All-in-all it sounded like a great day out in the fells – all it needed was a plan.
I was up in the Lakes last December with Mark, Dave and Jonathon for the Tour de Helvellyn and we popped into the George Fisher shop, which got us talking about completing the Tea Round, and before we’d got home we’d already planned a date for us all to come back.
The first few months of 2026 brought some pretty miserable weather to the UK – grey and raining almost every day, so we didn’t have high hopes for a nice day up in the Lakes. As it turned out we had possibly the best weather I’ve ever experienced!
We reckoned that the route would likely take us about 11 hours to complete and we really wanted to get to the George Fisher shop before they close at 5pm. With that in mind we decided on a 5am start, which we almost managed, setting off from the front of the shop at 5:23am. It had been clear overnight, so it was -3C when we started!
The first few kilometres to Hawes End were flat, easy running, after which we started the ascent up Cat Bells. We could see quite a few head torches in front of us and it sounds like the reason was that Cat Bells is renowned for brilliant sunrises and with the clear sky today was definitely going to be a special sunrise. We made it over the top before the sun was up but there was the beginnings of a lovely red sunrise in the east.
After Cat Bells we dropped down to the west to Little Town and then the first proper climb up to Robinson. A few days before there had been some snow overnight, so above about 500m there was a light covering of snow, which combined with the clear skies and the moon was quite magical.
The climb to Robinson was quite easy but the descent on the other side down to Buttermere was very steep and quite slippy in places, but mainly along a fence line so there was something to hold on to. At the back of my mind was the knowledge that the next ascent up to High Stile was going to be even steeper and up the northern aspect, so with much more snow cover.
We all got down to Buttermere without incident and were jogging along the road when we ran over some black ice and Jonathan suddenly fell quite hard. Fortunately nothing that he couldn’t run off, so we were all still good to carry on.
Round the eastern end of Buttermere and to the start of the biggest climb of the day, which got very steep towards the end with us scrambling up icy rock. At this point I was already quite warm and was down to just shorts and t-shirt, which looked quite out of place. Eventually we made it to the top of High Stile, after which we had a nice run along the tops to Red Pike.
The descent from Red Pike was much easier, on a proper path, although very slippery in places where streams had frozen on the stone.
Before long we were in Buttermere village where we stopped for a can of Coke to power us up the ascent to Whiteless Pike, a familiar ascent from the Lakeland 100, but much nicer in daylight. From the elevation profile it looked like we’d have almost all the climbing done by the time we’d finished this, and so were quite surprised to see that we still had 1000m to go by the time we reached the summit.
Next was a fairly easy section to the bottom of Eel Crag where we had an out-and-back to Grisedale Pike. On the way back we were looking at Eel Crag wondering how we were going to get up as it looked very steep and snow-covered, and indeed it was, with some proper icy bits.
Once we’d crested the top though, we had another fairly easy section over Sail and Causey Pike and out to another out-and-back to Rowling End. From here we could see the final summit, Barrow, but the route took us much further back up Causey Pike than seemed necessary. This was followed by some nasty descent and contouring through path-less heather. At this point we were all quite tired and I don’t think any of us enjoyed this section.
The climb up to Barrow was over before we knew it, and after that a nice grassy descent to Braithwaite, during which I had my only fall of the day on slippery patch of grass, which was fortunately a fairly forgiving surface to fall on.
After Braithwaite it was 5km of road back to Keswick and we managed to keep up a fairly decent pace, finishing a few minutes under 11 hours.
The weather, route and company made this one of the most enjoyable days out running I’ve ever had. It’s going to be a hard one to top, although we bumped into Rita and Hezel who’d just done the Cumbrian Traverse, which sounds like a potential follow-up.
The summits visited were:
| Summit | Elevation |
|---|---|
| Skelgill Bank | 338 m |
| Cat Bells | 451 m |
| High Snab Bank | 440 m |
| Robinson | 738 m |
| High Stile | 807 m |
| Red Pike | 755 m |
| Whiteless Pike | 660 m |
| Saddle Gate | 624 m |
| Thirdgill Head Man | 734 m |
| Hobcarton Crag | 738 m |
| Grisedale Pike | 790 m |
| Eel Crag | 807 m |
| Crag Hill | 839 m |
| Sail | 773 m |
| Scar Crags | 672 m |
| Causey Pike | 637 m |
| Rowling End | 433 m |
| Barrow | 455 m |
Strava log: https://www.strava.com/activities/17638358300