Three Peaks...

---in three weeks!

My days of attempting the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge - 24 miles in under 12 hours - are long gone but my love of climbing Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Whernside remains, so it was a bit of a no-brainer that when we were looking for walks to celebrate the lifting of the stay local rule that we headed for the Three Peaks.

First Pen-y-ghent, the easiest and most satisfying of the three mountains. It's a short, sharp walk up from Horton-in Ribblesdale with a rocky scramble to make you feel like you've climbed a real mountain, then a gentle descent making a 6.6 mile circular. Just right for the first trip out. An added bonus was that we caught the end of the purple saxifrage flowering season. This alpine plant is commonly found in lime rich habitats in Scotland and Wales and the Yorkshire Three Peaks area is its most southern habitat in England.

Next Ingleborough, my favourite of the Three Peaks, where we also spotted a wild flower, the tiny, exquisite bird's eye primrose, and had fun watching the helicopter on its round trip from the nearby quarry where it was scooping up donated crushed stone and dropping it on the footpath at Sulber Nick. The aim is to improve this heavily eroded area which attracts thousands of walkers every year.

 Our final peak was Whernside, the highest of the three but the least mountain-like. While Pen-y-ghent and Ingleborough offer a rocky summit the great whale of Whernside is more of a moorland walk. It's a fine circular from Ribblehead climbing steadily alongside the viaduct and Blea Moor signal box to pass Force Gill waterfall before heading for the summit. The descent is very steep but much improved recently and the walk back to Ribblehead through farmland is a joy at this time of year with the fields full of young lambs.

We might not have broken any records but our Three Peaks in three weeks gave us some fine days out. Highly recommended. 

Sparable Lane

Yesterday I led my first walk in over a year. On April 18th 2020 I was meant to be taking a group over Ingleborough with Friends of the Settle Carlisle line. That walk was of course cancelled. Yesterday's outing was a very different affair. Just 5 walkers and me (it was planned when the rule of 6 applied) on a 5 mile stroll between two of our local villages, Baildon and Bingley. The path between the two follows the wonderfully named Sparable Lane. A sparable was a cobbler's nail used to attach heels to boots and shoes and so-called because it was shaped like a sparrow's bill. There is no record of a cobbler's shop along the lane but it has been suggested that it was originally known as Sparrow's Bill Lane. I love ancient pathways; I love the stories they could tell, the hints that their names give to their origins and the fact that an old by-way was often the quickest, most straightforward way to connect two places.

 

Wharfedale Walking

The Dales Way, the trail that follows the rivers Wharfe, Dee and Lune from Ilkley to Bowness, is still one of the loveliest long distance walks. And after all these months of lockdown its gentle terrain is quite challenging enough. I am certainly nowhere near previous levels of fitness and a riverside walk is just what I needed this week when we set out to walk from Addingham to Barden Bridge. The weather was perfect, cold and crisp with the sun glinting on the water and lambs following their mothers across the fields alongside. 

We had an ulterior motive. To check out the accessibility of the Bolton Abbey estate to Dales Way walkers. The estate is currently charging £10 per pre-booked group for people to enter the grounds whether they arrive by car, bus, bike or on foot. This they say is to control numbers and ensure social distancing during the pandemic. A better way I suggest might have been to issue 90% of the available capacity as car park tickets knowing that a small number of visitors would arrive by foot. Charging a single walker or a couple £10 for getting off the bus in the village and walking down to the river seems very excessive to me. The Dales Way Association has been assured that these charges do not apply to anyone walking the Dales Way so long as they walk through the estate on the Dales Way route from Bolton Bridge to Barden Bridge or vice versa. We are happy to report that this is true and we had no problems doing just that, even stopping off for ice cream on the way.

I hope that once lockdown is lifted we will also see the lifting of these charges otherwise I'm afraid many people may be accusing the Duke of Devonshire of making money out of a global pandemic.