Some of the group's young people on top of the Old Man of Coniston. Photo: Brathay Exploration Group Trust

Aficionados of the late guidebook author Alfred Wainwright will help an organisation that helps encourage young people into the outdoors.

The Wainwright Society has chosen the Brathay Exploration Group Trust as its main charity for next year.

The trust will benefit from cash raised by the society through its annual charity challenge and sales of its calendar.

Money will go to help the Ambleside-based organisation to provide taster weekends for disadvantaged children to enjoy the Lakeland fells.

The trust, formed in 1947, is a charity that takes young people on exploration in the UK and throughout the world, as well as working with youngsters in the Lake District.

Derek Cockell of the Wainwright Society said it hoped that through the activities organised by Brathay Exploration Group more youngsters will be encouraged to climb and walk on Lakeland’s fells and experience the joy and wonder that Wainwright experienced when he was a young man exploring the mountains for the very first time.

Mr Cockell said: “When Alfred Wainwright was reminiscing in 1966 after he had completed the Pictorial Guides he wrote in Fellwanderer: “Do take the children on the hills early.

“Children are born scramblers and don’t hurt easily: it’s yourself you want to watch, not them. They will be in a seventh heaven of delight.”