Dentdale and Great Coum

Monday 21st April 2014

At the start of the day for this walk I left the town of Kirkby Stephen, where I had spent the night, and walked to the railway station, which is a mile and a half outside the town, and caught a train south to the second stop on the line, the isolated station of Dent. This station is situated high above and near the start of the valley of Dentdale, while the actual village of Dent is five miles away. Dentdale has been described as being the most beautiful valley in the Yorkshire Dales and yet it’s one of the least visited and least known. I’d never been there before and on this day I would get to see a lot of it as I walked to the village of Dent in glorious sunshine past stunning scenery, most notably beside the River Dee.

I started by descending steeply into the valley and immediately found an absolute gem in the limestone-lined riverbed of the River Dee below Lea Yeat Bridge. There is a fabulous little path beside the river that is edged with many woodland flowers in a setting of such exquisite beauty that I felt like I didn’t want to go any further. The solid rock riverbed had channels carved in it by the water where the slender river flowed swiftly through the stunning landscape that I thought was a majestic sight, but unfortunately it didn’t last very long as I made my way along the riverside path following the course of the Dales Way. The walk along the bottom of Dentdale was really enjoyable with a warm sun that shone on me as I passed numerous isolated houses. When I left the riverside and began passing through farmland the scenery became more varied until eventually I returned to the river where woodland flowers were once again in abundance.

Every field seemed to be covered in celandines, a carpet of small yellow, starry flowers set against a backdrop of bleak, smooth sided hills either side of the valley. It was only beside the river where more variety in the flowers was to be found with primroses the most prominent, but also some early bluebells. On moving across the valley to Deepdale Beck I found great masses of garlic smelling ramsons and a few wood anemones that added to my enjoyment of the walk, hearing the water rush over the rocks beside the river. When the village of Dent came within sight wild flowers began to appear in even more abundance, but unfortunately this was the point where I left the river and the Dales Way. Dent is a lovely village that didn’t seem too busy even on a Bank Holiday Monday, and after passing through I started to climb steeply up the hillside above the village beside Flinter Gill.

This is such a stunning gill that words cannot express my wonder and awe at the scenery. The stream has carved an amazing tree-lined shallow ravine that is filled with rock and ramsons creating a scene of mind-blowing beauty. The steepness of the terrain and the sheer wild exuberance of nature in the landscape simply took my breath away. At a couple of places a passage could be made onto the virtually dry riverbed and at a lower point the riverbed was solid rock with garlic-smelling ramsons covering the banks and dead trees littering the floor of the gill. Higher up a path crossed the stream at a point where the wild garlic seemed to have taken over so much that the only thing stopping their complete domination was the dry rock of the riverbed. It was just a pity that the ramson was not in flower yet. I contemplated climbing the gill on the dry riverbed but there was so much fallen wood in the gill it would have been very difficult to make my way up so I wisely decided to return to the track beside the stream and finished the climb on that, which led me all the way up to the open moor and a green lane.

There I had my lunch before setting off along the lane around the side of Great Coum. Soon after I set off I could see a line of cairns, similar to the Nine Standards Rigg that I had visited the day before, so I left the lane and made my way up the steep grassy hillside to a scattering of cairns known as the Megger Stones. These cairns were not as well-made or as well-maintained as those on Nine Standards Rigg so I continued to climb the hillside battling strong, cold winds all the way to the summit of Great Coum. This was a very tiring climb as the summit was a surprisingly long way away and when I got there I didn’t find anything particularly interesting to see and even though the south ridge was a little more interesting, after passing Gatty Pike I dropped down the long grassy eastern slope to Green Lane.
This lane eventually joins the road not far from Whernside, which I had originally planned on climbing (so that I’d climbed all of the Three Peaks on this holiday), but since I hadn’t planned on climbing Great Coum I decided to stay on the road for the six miles that led me all the way through Kingsdale to Ingleton.

By the time I got to Yordas I was fed up with walking along the road so I headed into a field beside the road in search of something more interesting. There wasn’t much on the ground to peak my curiosity, but I had a look nevertheless and soon I saw what seemed to be a small, long-dry waterfall. Above that I found a cave: Yordas Cave, so out came my torch as I tried to delve its depths. Unfortunately my torch wasn’t particularly powerful and the sound of water rushing somewhere in the dark depths deterred me from venturing too far into the cave before coming back out to try climbing the dry riverbed instead. This was great fun as I scrambled up the rocky bed until I eventually found the stream at the point where it disappears underground. It was fascinating to see the water pouring onto stones and disappearing but my exploration was cut short when I realised how late it was. I had wanted to explore on this holiday and find the hidden gems, but I hadn’t given myself enough time.

After returning to the road I continued walking down the valley and as I passed the crags of Keld Head Scar I couldn’t help wishing I had the time to explore them. Despite the long road walk at the end, this was a lovely day when I had a really enjoyable walk in sunny weather through Dentdale, an area with an abundance of gems, even if a lot of them were just woodland flowers. Flinter Gill was an amazing find that has got to be revisited as a place like that will keep on re-inventing itself with the passing seasons. Just a couple of weeks later I’m sure it is an even better sight when the white flowered ramsons are in bloom and fill the gill with millions of tiny stars. It was the highlight of the day, but unfortunately Great Coum was not worth the climb.