Station to Station – Settle to Horton in Ribblesdale

One of the projects I decided to do this summer is to walk from Settle to Carlisle in day walks using the Settle to Carlisle railway.
And so it was that I arrived for the 10:56 train from Horton to Settle in time for the 09:56 train, due to some kind of slippage in the time-space continuum. It just so happens that there isn’t a train at 09:56 and neither was there one at 10:56 – it arrived a quarter of an hour late due to “signals”.

Luckily, Bruno was entertained by a young lad of about five or six or something who’d been wild camping with his Grandad. They also turned up an hour early due to the same gravity/time/space/British Summer Time Misunderstanding Accident.  Anyway the lad donated some of the scoff from his rucksack to Bruno’s “Save the Dawg from creeping malnutrition fund” and found some sticks for Bruno to chase and turn into tiny little sticks.

Eventually, we set off from Settle. I pretty much made up the route as I went along and it turned out to be fairly interesting.
First of all, we visited Attermire Scars – which looks like the Holy Land of your childhood but without the donkeys, roman soldiers and the people in their pyjamas with tea-towels on their heads.  Very nice and whitish and craggy.

Next, we visited Victoria Cave, with it’s long history of pre-ice age hyenas, post-ice age bears, romano-british workers in a workshop and modern foxes and badgers. And the ramblers scoffing their lunch just outside. I had a brief poke around inside. It was dark.

Then, a little further along, there was Jubilee Cave(s). This is a good place to insert children because they will pop up somewhere else from various hidden exits. There’s nothing much inside that would cause damage, apart from the roof which could take off an unguarded scalp.  I had another look inside and it was dark in there too, but with bits of daylight from various hidden exits.

Then there was the Winskill nature reserve and it’s erotic boulders. I took a picture. It includes the dog. Its rock from somewhere else, y’see…. glaciers did it.  There’s loads of them.

 

After this, we had a look at Catrigg Force – a rather beautiful double waterfall in a deep gorge. I once had a swim there in a summer thunderstorm; an odd experience. No swimming today as the water temperature was probably not much more than half a dozen centigrades, which is a contra-indication to enjoyment and , it has to be said, survival.

We went to Stainforth and then followed the Ribble Way towards Penyghent, which beckoned unconvincingly (as it looked quite big….)
So, rejecting the advances of Penyghent , we cut down to Dub Cote and Horton.

Note that the car park at Horton charges and gets very full very early, specially on summer Sundays. The station car park on the other hand, is small but free for travellers and was empty today, apart from the knipemobile. You have to brave the “no entry, no parking, just bugger off” signs from the residents of local houses, but I had no problem, apart from a “funny look”
Stage two coming soon.
Today was 10 miles and 2300 feet of ascent. It would be possible (I almost said “easy”, to include Penyghent.) My knees had had enough, though.

Badger Way and Other Trade Routes

Bruno had been hinting that a longish walk would be just the thing by staring at me accusingly for half an hour or so at a time and loading my lap with doggy toys..

And so, after putting it off for a while due to inclemency in the weather department, Wednesday was to be bright and sunny, so we set off to a very small car park near the summit of The Stang – a road from Barnard Castle to Reeth.

We didn’t particularly enjoy the clear-felled forest (save our forests!), but we did enjoy the wide open spaces and bounding bridleways of Barningham Moor – one of which, of course, is the Badger way (nowt to do with black and white badgers – but more to do with itinerant tradesmen wearing a badge to avoid arrest as a vagrant and subsequent deportation to the home parish) Thus, the badgers , or tinkers, had routes across the moors to service the needs of the lead-mining population of Arkengarthdale and Swaledale and/or to transport minerals to railheads.

This makes for fab, wide-open, joyous and fairly quick rambling with a purpose. Not the kind of place to have an attack of agorophobia, and just the kind of place that RAF pilots like to hurtle over just before they receive their redundancy notices.

There was a skylark singing up high in the sunshine. And a lapwing was jinking about and calling. And a plover, bored as ever. It felt like spring. Despite the bright white of fresh snow on the high Pennines of Mickle fell, it felt like spring. We know it isn’t , though, eh?

Basically, we just followed bridleway in a big 14 mile circle. It was sunny and it was warm and this is exactly the kind of walking that walkers wish for.

There seems to be a surfeit of baby rabbits by the way. They’re all over the place. Bruno hunted unsuccessfully due, mainly to being on a lead.

14 Miles and 1800 feet of up.

Inspiration - A J Brown’s Moorland Tramping

I discovered a copy of Arthur J Brown’s 1931 walkers guide to the “West Yorkshire” moors in the banqueting hall at Knipe Towers, “Moorland Tramping.”  By “West Yorkshire”, by the way, this chap means, of course, the West Riding of Yorkshire – the county which once stretched from Doncaster to The Calf, and includes a great lump of the Forest of Bowland, too. So, there’s plenty of moors.
Mr Brown says that as the roads are getting very busy and quite dangerous due to the spread of the motor car, that walkers, or “trampers” are going to have to find somewhere a bit safer to walk – and he’s come up with the suggestion that the moors hold lots of tracks that go from one place to another and which make ideal routes away from all that nasty traffic.  Hmmmm…. I think he’s got something here….

And so, after going on about equipment for a bit, in which he decries the use of boots as being too heavy, he suggests saving up and paying a cobbler the princely sum of £3 to have some proper shoes made. He also suggests supervising the cobbler whilst he spends long candle-lit nights in his cobbling shop cobbling your shoes.  These shoes can be expected to last for years and years although they may have to be bailed out occasionally. If its snowing or raining very heavily, then some chunky boots may be allowed.
On rucksacks, he recommends the lightest available. Inside the pack should be a roast beef sandwich and an apple and a waterproof cape. Other essential things such as your guidebook, map, compass, volume of poetry, pipe, tobacco, matches and railway tickets, can be stored in the pockets of your tweed jacket. He does, however, have some reservations about maps and compasses because people who use them are “forever stopping en route to consult their instruments”, although he does concede that a person of a scientific mind may well derive some enjoyment from studying maps and, perhaps, taking an observation every hour or so…. (all good clean fun this, eh?)
On “ultra lightweight”, Mr Brown suggests staying in a pub overnight. Your accommodation should be your very last economy. Far too much lumber is carried by the youth of today.
You should also consider using a stout staff or pole. This should be a straight piece of ash. This can be used to persuade cattle or to test the depth of snowdrifts.

Mr Brown then goes on to describe some routes, and in doing this, I am immediately reminded of Alf Wainwright and his Pennine Journey, for one of the first routes to appear is a “Yorkshire Rivers” walk from Malham (Aire) to High Force (Tees)  The south bank of the river Tees is firmly in Yorkshire, as every true Yorkshireman will attest. This route can then be extended to Hadrian’s Wall if a longer holiday is required. Justaminnit…..  this was 1931 – just half a decade before Alf had the same idea….  I wonder if Alf had a copy of “Moorland Tramping”? Was it, I wonder, available in the public library in Blackburn?
No matter.
The there’s the “Three Peaks in One Day” route. Hello?
Two routes are suggested.
The first starts at the Hill Inn at Chapel le Dale and the tramper is recommended to climb Whernside first, returning to the Inn for breakfast. A walk over Ingleborough to the Crown at Horton in Ribblesdale follows where light refreshments may be taken before bagging Penyghent and returning to Horton for more refreshments and the train home.
Route two starts at the Sun Inn in Dent at 07:00
then the following timetable applies:
Whernside Pikes 08:10
Whernside 09:00 to 09:30
Hill in Chapel le Dale 10:30 to 10:45
Ingleborough 12:00 to 12:15
Crown Inn Horton in Riblesdale 14:00 to 15:00 (lunch)
Hull Pot 15:45
Penyghent 16:50
Hesleden Gill Bridge 17:15
Litton 18:15 to 18:45
Kilnsey 21:15
Presumably a night at the hotel at Kilnsey follows.
This is quite a timetable.
Anyway, the point is that I’m Inspired to have a go at these routes – Malham to High Force in a pretty straight line – and the Three Peaks from Dent to Wharfedale (probably go to Grassington) – though, one day may seem like a punishment, but Dent – Horton and Horton – Grassington may be more like fun – that is to say, two days.
So, this year, at some point, I’ll be doing some Moorland Tramping.

Simon Fell and Ingleborough

This is the very last pair of the Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot tops series. It all went approximately to plan, so J_on_ tour can keep his buff.
The bit that went wrong was me getting up a bit late, so it was nearly eleven o’clock when I parked the knipemobile at Clapham. It was OK, though, I just chopped a little bit off the planned walk.

The walking up to join the Three Peaks path on it’s final downhill lurch to Horton was  really very enjoyable. Its very easy walking on short green turf, y’see, and the views towards Penyghent, across a fine karst plateau are, well, very fine. Somewhere along the route, I lost my banana. But I was cheered up from the post-fruitless-mourning by the bright sunshine and blue skies, although the force four “breeze” from higher latitudes was a bit more than chilling.

We wandered towards Ingleborough, turning off to follow a wall up to Lord’s Seat – a grand limestone nobble with a cracking view of Upper Ribblesdale. To get there we had to cross “Rawnsley’s Leap”, a monster of a ladder stile which is listed in Yorkshire Limestone Climbing Guides as V-Diff. We crossed it back again a few minutes later and rambled up to the summit.

I wanted to follow the path which runs along the edge of Ingleborough’s magnificent corrie, and to do this me and the dawg had to negotiate a wobbly wall defended by barbed wire. This went without too much of a hitch and Bruno has all his bits, and so have I, apart from the parts which have been removed surgically, in Bruno’s case, the vet in Bishop Auckland, and in my case the Urology Department at Bradford Royal Infirmary’s inebriate ferret “Jason” who is introduced into the tight underpants of those who’s wives consider that they have sufficient children. If you catch my drift.

Anyway, the path along the edge of the corrie was icy but good to walk on. Soon we were on the summit, bemoaning the loss of our banana, but enjoying, instead, ginger cake, coffee and chocolate. I talked briefly to a lad who was doing the 3 Peaks and was heading for a ten hour time.  He seemed cheerful enough, so we didn;t tell him any fart or vasectomy jokes, but plunged off over the edge of the Brigantian ramparts to Little Ingleborough, down to Gaping Gill and then back on the lanes and through the tunnels to Clapham.

This is my last 2000 foot top of this series. I saved the best till the last.
For information of those confused souls out there, this wasn’t my first ascent of Ingleborough. I’ve been there before, many times since my first in October 1971. I’ve been on two fell searches on the hill and helped recover the remains of a scouser who lost an argument with a large boulder. And camped on it a couple of times and been inside it. Its my favourite Yorkshire Dales hill. I’ll likely climb it again.

12 Miles and 2250 feet of climbing.
The next question is, though – what shall I do next?
Hmmmmm……

Calf Top Not 2000 Feet High

Just thought I’d mention this as I’m re-bagging the Yorkshire dales 2000 foot tops.
Those hill-bagging height surveyors who recently measured Tryfan and Glyder Fach and so on, have just published some results concerning the height of Calf Top.
calf Top is just to the left of Barbon and, whilst it isn’t technically in the Yorkshire Dales, it is in the Pennines next to Great Coum and not far from the Howgills, so if it turned out to be 2000 feet high, then I’d have to bag it.
As it happens, i bagged it earlier this year, but never mind that – stop being so pedantic.
Anyway, following the resurvey, the OS have accepted the results and , in future, calf Top will appear on new OS maps with a height of 610 metres.
Justaminnit – I hear you exclaim…  610 metres is 2000 feet!
Yes it is. But it’s been rounded up. Apparently, they take averages and use horrible things like probabilities and statistics and things with Numbers. And calf Top is probably just under 2000 feet by a couple of millimetres. 13/16ths of an inch, to be probably fairly precise.
So its not a Nuttall/Hewitt.
And I don’t have to bag it again. I don’t have to, but its rather a nice hill, so I might anyway.
Just so that when you see the new height on your new map, you won’t do anything rash.
The results and survey report are in http://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/

Winter Draws on – A Competition

On 26th October 2009 I began a NorthernPies series of walks for the bagging of all of the 2000 foot tops in the Yorkshire Dales – That is, everything of 610 metres and over between the A65 and the A66 – the Aire Gap and Stainmore Pass.
An account of each of the walks appears in this very blog – well, where else would it be?
I’ve done them all except two. These last two will be done in one final walk.
The question is: Which hill will be the last one?
The prize is worth about twenty of your English pounds, is still in its original packaging and is something which will help to keep you warm during the forthcoming hardest-winter- since-the-last-one. In fact it’s so good, I might get one myself. This is a unisex piece of kit.
Entries to the competition can be made either by a comment to this thread or by email (see my profile). Emails are more discreet, obviously. Some comments won’t be published straight away, though as I’ll be on my hols for some of the time.
The closing date is midnight on 17 October 2010.
Its likely that there will be more than one correct entry and, if so, a random draw will be made.
Only one entry per reader and as I am de judge, my decisions on all matters concerning this competition will be final and there is no appeals mechanism.
The hill will not have been climbed by me or superdawg since 26 October 2009
Which hill will be the last in the series?

Swinner Gill and Rogans Seat

Just to say that the trap that this bird has been unlucky enough to come a cropper in, is a trap meant for stoats and rats. By reducing the number of stoats and rats, the numbers of red grouse and other ground nesting birds (but lets be honest, we’re really only interested in red grouse)… can be protected and increased, The bird in the trap is, of course, a red grouse. Its not funny. Well, its not funny for the grouse….

Anyway, moving right along – Today it was time to bag yet another of those Yorkshire dales 2000 foot tops. In fact – two – these being Rogan’s Seat and Water Crag. Rogan’s Seat’s main claim to interest is that it was once voted the most boring hill in England. I don;t think it is, and on this walk, I’ve set out to prove it.
I had to leave superdawg at home again, to protect the red grouse (snicker snicker……) and so, I was all on mysef when I parked the knipemobile by the bridge at Gunnerside.

A rather pleasant riverside path through meadows populated by this years lambs being fattened up – and a horde of Coast-to-Coasters on a low-level alternative coming the other way, all big packs and blisters. Its a nice path. Not exciting, but very nice.

Soon, I arrived at the foot of Swinner Gill and a steep track took me up to Crackpot Hall – a farmhouse devastated by subsidence caused by lead mining. From here, it starts to get a bit more exiting. A thin path takes the slightly more excited walker back into Swinner Gill. Normally, the route to Rogan’s Seat climbs steeply Eastwards on the Coast to Coast path and then takes an estate track across heathery moors to the little cairn on the top. The route is a bit dull, it has to be admitted.

But this wasn’t for us (i.e. me). Oh no.  We (i.e. me) followed Swinner Gill upstream into a deep gorge with overhanging limestone walls. This is Swinner Gill Kirk. there’s a Yorkshire tradition of calling deep limestone gorges “Kirk” – which, of course, means “church”. There’s no church or kirk, never has been. Its the gorge.

Its quite narrow and has knee-deep pools and small waterfalls and a dipper or two. It ends at a waterfall. No further progress beyond the waterfall can be made without a risky scramble, so I retraced and scrambled up the left hand rocky wing of the Kirk. This was quite good fun, and quite easy (otherwise it wouldn’t have been fun, innit..) – and a short traverse on steep bracken brought me back into the gill. More pools and waterfalls and short scrambly bits followed. It was all good clean fun. (It occurs to me that this would be an excellent scramble on a hot sunny day)

I did discover an old level next to one waterfall. I braved the drippy entrance but the way on was low and wet and muddy and I wasn’t equipped for mining, so I retreated. I noticed a boot print in the mud, though, so maybe it goes somewhere.

Even more waterfalls and pools and little steps followed till I was high up on the moor (where I found the unlucky grouse)
This is much better than the other way. But I joined the estate track  about half a click from the summit.

The summit has a small cairn on a peat hag. There’s quite a good view – south to Ingleborough and, even Pendle Hill, and North to Mickle Fell.
A fence is followed to Water Crag and the walking is mainly very easy with just a few soggy bits. Water Crag’s view Northwards is even better, being on the edge of the Stainmore Gap. its a great place to watch the A66….

Water Crag has a currick, a trig point and a circular stone shelter, which I rebuilt a bit. Its a cosy spot, out of the wind…
The next bit was rough. Gwan, ask me how rough it was…. Gwan.   It was rough – heathery then peat-haggy with no path at first, though, by handrailing the little beck, a few short sections of path did appear.


The beck leads into Gunnerside Gill which has good paths, a couple of nice limestone gorges but it’s main interest lies in the mineworkings. the place is completely devastated – absolutely ruined. It will only recover after its been iced over for a million years or so in the next ice age. But its quite fascinating. Its not pretty, but it is interesting.
I was soon in the bar of the Kings Head in Gunnerside with a pint of bitter shandy. The King’s head, by the way, has a sign outside which announces that kids, muddy boots and dogs are all welcome. Which is good.
On the way home, I broke the clutch in the knipemobile and managed to drive home from Barnard Castle without actually changing gear at all….  But its OK. It’ll be fixed in time for Peebles and my forthcoming Welsh hols.  It could have happened on the A5! When I told the dog, he said it served me right…..
Today was 13 miles and 1800 feet.

The question is – what will be the last Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot top. I am about to announce that there will be a Pie Blog competition with an actual prize. You’ll have to wait a couple of days. I have to get me clutch fixed first.