Buckden Pike and Great Whernside

Monday 13th September 2004

On the third day of my walking holiday in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004 I headed into the picturesque valley of Wharfedale eventually stopping in the village of Kettlewell. After parking up I got kitted up and started walking back up the valley that I had just driven down following the path that keeps to the western bank of the River Wharfe. I returned to Kettlewell ten years later, partly in the hope of capturing some pictures to illustrate this blog entry, when I eventually made it. Unfortunately the weather was so poor I was unable to repeat the walk shown here or, more tragically, take a picture to illustrate it. The weather on my original walk was much better with sunshine following me as I made my way up the valley past Starbotton and into the village of Buckden. At this point I crossed the valley and took to a bridlepath that slants up the side of the valley passing through Rakes Wood slowly climbing the broad slopes of Buckden Pike. This walk was a long time ago and I have nothing to aid my memory so it is difficult for me to remember any details about it at this point.

I think I encountered some bad weather while driving over Kidstones Bank from Wensleydale, but I don’t remember the weather being too bad at this point though there might have been some lingering clouds hanging over the pass. The thing I do remember about the top of Buckden Pike is the extensive bogs that covered much of the hill. After passing the trig point at the summit I headed south and I remember at one point taking a very wide detour around a vast bog that stretched out from the wall that traverses the flat top of Buckden Pike. After a prolonged and tricky trek along the top I eventually reached the southern end of the summit plateau at the curiously named Top Mere Top. Here a bridlepath heads off the hill taking a route on the ancient Starbotton Cam Road and down a clear track called the Top Mere Road that leads all the way into Kettlewell. When I was approaching Kettlewell in 2014 Top Mere Road could clearly be seen above Kettlewell with Buckden Pike itself behind.

However, I did not take this route down in 2004 but turned left at Top Mere Top to follow a path that comes down to the top of a pass that could be named Hunters and links Kettlewell with Coverdale. After crossing the road I made my way along the path that climbs the slopes of Black Dike to reach the top of my second Whernside in as many days. Despite being smaller in height this one is much wider and has a smaller top nearby called Little Whernside with the higher top called Great Whernside. The weather turned vicious during my climb up the slopes of Black Dike and I remember being assailed by hail driven by strong winds that forced me to seek whatever shelter I could find on this exposed hillside by crouching down as low as I could get. Thankfully the hail didn’t last long and I was able to resume my trek up Black Dike to the summit rocks of Great Whernside. The rocks that litter the summit of this hill make this a much more appealing summit than its namesake in the Three Peaks and it makes me regret never returning to this hill in the fourteen years since this walk.

At the trig point that marks the summit I turned right onto a path that heads down the hill leading all the way into Kettlewell with good views up and down the valley of Wharfedale during the ascent. I remember the village being decorated with something unusual though I couldn’t remember what until I did a check online and found mention of the Kettlewell Scarecrow Festival. This has been going on since the nineties and is held in August so a month later I may have seen some of the smaller examples that had survived. This walk has been greatly diminished by the passing years so without any photographs to reawaken my memory it has almost faded into obscurity, though a couple of memories have survived: the bogs on Buckden Pike and the hail on Great Whernside. It is tragic that this walk has not been better remembered and even more that these impressive hills have not been paid the honour of a return visit. That is surely an oversight that must be corrected as soon as possible.

Whernside and Ingleborough

Sunday 12th September 2004

When you start talking about the three peaks to anyone, assuming they have heard about them, they will assume you are referring to the national three peaks challenge that has been hijacked by charities as a way of earning money. People who have never walked up a hill in their lives think it would be a good idea to be sponsored to walk up to the highest point in Scotland, England and Wales and all in less than twenty-four hours. However this was not the original three peaks as the Three Peaks really refers to an area in the south-west corner of the Yorkshire Dales National Park where three prominent hills form a striking feature in the landscape. A Three Peaks Challenge has also been developed in this area, but instead of twenty-four hours walkers have twelve hours to complete the challenge including walking in between. In 2004 I was in the Three Peaks area for the first time and walked up to the top of Pen-y-ghent, the smallest of the three, the day before this walk, but I was not going to try to do all three in one go.

The following day I decided I would tackle the other two so I drove up Ribblesdale and parked near the Ribblehead railway station. I remember having a very nice Giant Yorkshire Pudding meal in the Station Inn at Ribblehead ten years earlier with my father, but now I had come with more than a just a goal of visiting the Ribblehead viaduct, even though it is an impressive sight stretching over Batty Moss on twenty-four spans. My first goal this time was the whalebacked hill behind the viaduct: Whernside, the highest of the three peaks. Following the railway line north I passed the isolated signal box that stands guard over the exposed Bleamoor Sidings before eventually crossing the railway line and heading up Slack Hill. There has been a lot of work on this path in recent times to repair the damage done by the thousands of people who climb Whernside every year, many of them as part of the Three Peaks Challenge, but I have no memory of the state of the path on this occasion so many years ago.

I don’t think the weather was very good and it wasn’t long before I was heading into some truly challenging weather. I remember using the rain cover on my rucksack so it must have been raining, and I remember at one point on the exposed ridge the wind was so strong it ripped the rain cover completely off my rucksack. Fortunately my rain cover was securely attached to my rucksack so I didn’t lose it, but the conditions must have been particularly bad, so when I reached the summit I shrunk down behind the wall, which runs along the length of the hill so I could shelter from the ferocious wind. The route of the Three Peaks Challenge continues along the top of the ridge south for a while until eventually it veers downhill following the crowds into Chapel-le-Dale. Despite the poor weather I do recall that there were a fair number of people on the route then, which does make you wonder how many more people would be doing it now, in better weather. After a short section on a road a path heads into Southerscales Scars, a stunning area of limestone outcrops, pavements of limestone that cover the ground across vast areas across the slopes of Ingleborough.

I have been back to this area twice since this walk and have still not seen even a fraction of the wonder of this magnificent landscape. Reluctantly I continued along the path as it gradually steepens before spectacularly steepening to climb the craggy slopes into the mist and poor weather at the top of Ingleborough. The summit is across a level, stony platform, but in these conditions there was no view and no incentive to stay so I turned around back to the bottom of the shallow saddle that separates the top of Ingleborough from its twin, Simon Fell. As rain began to return to the tops I made my way to the rarely visited summit of Simon Fell before heading north following a wall that passes over the broad top of Park Fell and descending steeply into Ribblesdale. Eventually I reached the road at the bottom of the valley where a careful walk along the busy road was required so I could finally reach my car at Ribblehead. The weather, as so often in Britain, was not nice on this walk and that is really my abiding memory of the walk. The views were non-existent so all I can remember of the walk is the wind and rain on two iconic hills that really deserve more.

Malham Tarn and Pen-y-ghent

Saturday 11th September 2004

This time of the year the weather is not really conducive towards walking which means that I run out of walks to describe on this blog. In the past I have mined the dim and distant past for walks that I did early in my career before I started this blog and often when doing that I have been able to use my diaries from that time to aide my memory of those walks. However on some of those early walking holidays I didn’t make any notes of my experiences at the time so it has been difficult to now translate those holidays onto this blog. One such holiday is the one that I took in the late summer of 2004 and once again I will have nothing to help me except my own feeble memory of all those years ago. It was held in the Yorkshire Dales and North Pennines, and even stretched to end in the Lake District with a fabulous walk on the Kentmere Round, but it started in the Three Peaks area of the Yorkshire Dales. First thing in the morning I drove up, around Leeds, and to the tiny village of Arncliffe, in Littondale.

To start the walk I headed along the curiously named Monk’s Road, a path that climbs up the hillside above the valley of Cowside Beck into an area rich in limestone outcrops and stunning views. My memory of the weather on the walk is a little vague, but I’m not sure it was great and may even have had rather low cloud which would not have shown off the scenery to its best. Passing through the rich limestone countryside I passed through the Midge Hills and turned right at Middle House Farm to head down to the stunning Malham Tarn. Limestone absorbs water so lakes are a rare sight in the Yorkshire Dales, but Malham Tarn sits on a bed of Silurian slate creating one of the largest lakes in the area and is consequently one of its biggest tourist attractions. Since this holiday was my first in the Yorkshire Dales, this was the first time that I had ever been to Malham Tarn and fortunately I would see better weather on my subsequent visits.

Turning right at the shore of Malham Tarn onto the Pennine Way I followed this greatest of all long distance trails in Britain across the top of the Cowside Beck valley and up into the low cloud on Fountains Fell. I distinctly remember walking over this hill in misty conditions and since I had great weather for my walk along this section of the Pennine Way in 2009 then that must be from this walk. Despite the poor weather I was able to follow the route of the clear path over the vast flat-topped fell to the northern edge where a clear track takes a diagonal route down the hillside where, on a clear day, stunning, and tantalising, views can be seen across the valley of the distinctively shaped Pen-y-ghent. Following the route of the Pennine Way I came down to a road and after a short distance left the road to come round to the southern tip of Pen-y-ghent where a sporting scramble up the steep hill led me satisfactorily to the windswept summit of this iconic hill, the smallest, but most beloved of the Three Peaks.

I can’t imagine that the weather was particularly good on this exposed summit so I’m sure I must not have lingered, but soon headed beside the wall that runs along the length of this elongated hill. Pen-y-ghent is the highest point of this hill and lies at the southern end of an upland mass that broadens out after crossing a saddle to the much wider Plover Hill. This wall was my guide along the top of the otherwise featureless hill and lead me down to the boggy col and up the gradual climb until eventually I reached the summit of Plover Hill. Although I have since been back to Pen-y-ghent, in 2009 while walking the Pennine Way, I have not been back to Plover Hill, and I’m guessing most people also don’t go across to Pen-y-ghent’s twin simply because it is slightly smaller, but also because it is, in fairness, less appealing in appearance. Coming off from the summit I headed north down the grassy slopes out of clouds and onto Foxup Road, which is a track that took me down to the bottom of the valley at Foxup.

I was now in the upper reaches of Littondale and to conclude this walk all I had to do was follow the valley bottom path all the way back to my car in Arncliffe. This was not a short walk and took me several hours during which time the weather finally decided to let go as it started raining so that by the time I reached my car I was quite wet and quite late. I think I didn’t get to my car until after six o’clock and I still needed to get to the youth hostel where I had pre-booked an evening meal for seven o’clock. As the crow flies the hostel was not far away as I was staying at the now closed Stainforth Youth Hostel, but the roads in between are very narrow and feature lots of steep gradients. I eventually reached the hostel just before seven and only just in time for dinner. Ever since then I have tried to avoid pre-booking dinner at hostels just in case I’m delayed on my walk. The weather was not kind to me on this walk, which is a shame as I’m sure my memories of it would have been a lot warmer if the weather had been likewise.

The Windermere Fells

Saturday 23rd December 2017

The weather continued to deteriorate on the last day of my Christmas holiday in the Lake District with low cloud and mist afflicting me once again, so as I caught the bus from the Ambleside Youth Hostel to the Windermere railway station I was not hopeful for much of a walk. My train wasn’t going to leave until the afternoon so I had to find something to do in the meantime and I had decided that to pass the time I would nip up several of the small hills that lie on the eastern slopes of the lake, Windermere. The first fell was one that I had already climbed twice before, most recently last Christmas in weather that was no better than now. To try and come up with a different route I walked up the main road for a short distance before taking a path that heads north into Common Wood on a permissive path. After negotiating a number of junctions I eventually found myself at the top of Orrest Head where there was absolutely no view whatsoever, which is disappointing as the views from this point are legendary stretching up and down the length of Windermere, while beyond the lake the Lakeland Fells, particularly the Langdale Pikes and the Coniston Fells, entice the first-comer towards the many wonders and splendid beauty of the Lake District.

I had none of that on this occasion so I headed north off the summit down to a junction of paths, and after nipping over a low grassy ridge I turned back towards the south passing through pleasant woodland and returned to the railway station. My walk to my next outlying fell did not start well as I made my way through a housing estate and it didn’t improve until I eventually emerged from this domestic nightmare into a rising field richly planted with trees and a clear view ahead of me towards a peak on the murky horizon. Heading up the saturated ground of this park-like area I came to a gate that leads out onto the open fell where School Knott was peeking out from amongst the clouds. I could just about see two tops ahead of me so striking a course up the grassy terrain I made my way up vague paths and by the time I reached the top there were no views as the clouds had descended once more completely enveloping the fell. Wainwright mentions two other tops near School Knott, so despite not being able to see them I took a bearing and headed down the slopes and upon passing through a gate I suddenly came across a pretty tarn.

The clouds seemed to have lifted once more at this point and were providing me with some relatively good views down the valley and around Schoolknott Tarn, which was looking quite tranquil and blissful in its bubble of clear air away from the clouds. Crossing the outlet of the tarn I entered another area of open fell and by the time I reached the top of Grandsire the clouds had lifted so much I now, finally, had a view all the way down to Windermere. School Knott was also clear of clouds and I could see over Schoolknott Plantation to Windermere town lying at the foot of Orrest Head. There even seemed to be a bit of sunlight shining upon Windermere, which raised my hopes that the day would further improve, but unfortunately this was all I was going to get and as I made my way down the southern slopes of Grandsire the clouds descended once more and now it actually began to rain. After briefly joining up with the Dales Way I turned left to climb an unnamed 247 metre top that is the third summit in the School Knott chapter of Wainwright’s guide to the Outlying Fells of Lakeland.

The weather was quite drizzly at this point so I had no hesitation in turning around as soon as I reached the top and came back down the hill to rejoin the Dales Way. This long distance trail directed my steps for the next mile as I turned south to Cleabarrow, past Low House Farm and Matson Grange until I eventually reached Brantfell Farm. I had now almost reached Bowness and the end of the Dales Way, but immediately after passing Brantfell Farm I turned left to climb Brant Fell and by now it was properly raining. I did not want to linger at the top in these wet and windy conditions so I immediately turned back towards Bowness and headed down the slopes to the tiny viewpoint of Post Knott. The views over Windermere were so murky I didn’t stop but headed onto the path that took me back onto the Dales Way and soon I was in Bowness steeply descending the narrow streets to reach the crowds of tourists on shores of Windermere.

These three outlying fells did not really engage my interest, though this may have partly been due to the poor weather and the lack of a view. However, even in good weather I’m not sure whether these tops could really compete against the great fells that could have been seen beyond the lake if the weather was better. The Windermere Fells are too grassy and do not have enough rock to really inspire me, though in the wet weather I don’t think anything could have awoken my interest. I suppose this was a fitting end to a week in the Lake District when the weather was never particularly good and had gradually worsened as the week progressed. However on the other hand, I loved being back in the Lake District again after, apart from a very brief visit in the summer, almost a year’s exile. I had been desperate to return and it has so awakened my love of the Lake District that I am keen to be back as soon as possible.