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.