Walks in Askrigg

Walk the James Herriot Way

Fan of All Creatures Great and Small? Then, you'll love this walk. The walk is a 52 mile circular route starting in Aysgarth and taking in majestic sights such as Hardraw Force, Aysgarth Falls and Bolton Castle. Barns in beautiful Swaledale Route Distance: 52 miles Start location: Aysgarth, Wensleydale Finish Location: Aysgarth, Wensleydale OS Walking Map & GPX Download Our OS map below shows the full route. Under the map, you can find a GPX file download for your navigational device. herriot-way-newDownload Walk Description This walk is inspired by the walking holiday that vet and author James Herriot took with his son Jimmy around the Youth Hostels of Aysgarth, Grinton and Keld. There is no wonder Herriot loved this area so much and chose it for the location for many of his books. This 52 mile long route takes four to five days to cover and combines gentle walks through valley bottoms with energetic climbs on the skylines. It takes you through parts of Swaledale and Wensleydale, and includes big sights such as Hardraw Force, Aysgarth Falls and Bolton Castle. The 52 miles can be broken into four 13 mile days, each one ending in a village with plenty of local amenities where you're sure to get a warm Yorkshire welcome.  The walk begins in the village of Aysgarth in Wensleydale where you can marvel at the spectacular Aysgarth Falls before following the River Ure to Askrigg. The village was used as the fictional Darrowby in the BBC TV series All Creatures Great and Small, based on the books by James Herriot. Just along from here you can visit the fantastic Mill Gill and Whitfield Force Waterfalls. Continue along the route to the village of Hardraw where you'll find the epic Hardraw Force Waterfall which is England's highest single drop waterfall, falling some 100ft.The route then heads to the market town of Hawes before climbing Great Shunner Fell which is the highest point in Wensleydale and commands wonderful views over Ribblesdale to the south west and Swaledale to the north. After descending the hill to Thwaite the route then takes in the village of Keld and Gunnerside Moor before passing the beautiful valley of Gunnerside Gill. Following the River Swale into Reeth. The route continues along to the inspiring 14th Century Castle Bolton passing through open moorland with it's stunning heather (in the Summer months). The final section takes you back to Aysgarth, where you'll be needing a much needed rest after a fantastic route taking in the very best of the Yorkshire Dales. 

Walk: Askrigg

A brisk walk around the lovely countryside of Askrigg. The Route What3words for start point: ///pats.reject.rooms Start Point: Askrigg Car Park, Parkins Garth, Askrigg, Leyburn, DL8 3HD Finish Point: Askrigg Car Park, Parkins Garth, Askrigg, Leyburn, DL8 3HD Distance: 6 Miles GPX Route Map walkshireaskriggDownload Walk Description From the car park, turn right onto Leyburn Road, and then turn left as the road turns into Main Street. As the road splits, veer right to carry on Main Street onto Mill Lane. In the field after Broad Close, look to the left and take the footpath on the left. Follow the clear path into the trees, and across Paddock Beck via the footbridge. Turn right on the path instead of going straight, and follow the line of the trees. Ahead are three junctions with other footpaths; ignore the one to the left and then the one to the right, and at the third, turn to the right to again follow the edge of the trees on the right. The path is clear on the ground as it follows the line of the beck, until it crosses over it via a footbridge. The path now turns to the left to follow the edge of the trees on your left until it reaches a dual-walled track on the right. Turn right and walk down the track, called Low Straights Lane. Carry on along this track, eventually turning right on on the fourth footpath to branch off on the right. Follow the clear path on the ground to the left of the barn and then follow the line of the trees on your left through two fields to go past another barn on the left. Then follow the wall on the left to the gate at the bottom. Turn left and follow the clear footpath between the buildings in Askrigg on Moor Road. Turn left Turn right after a house and before an area of grass on the right, and follow this track into the fields. Veer to the left into the next door field, and good through the various gates to reach the road Howgate via a gate, Turn right, then turn left at the next road junction to walk down Low Gate. At the first public footpath sign, marked Aysgarth, turn left through the gate. Head to the right of the barn, then into the narrow gap between the boundary walls, before crossing over the next wall via the stile and then heading to the left of the next barn. Join the lane, Thwaite Holme Lane, and turn left, following the lane until it crosses Newbiggin Beck towards Nappa Mill. Turn right on the path, crossing over the beck again, and follow the River Ure to reach a road. Turn left to follow the road as it bends, but then turn right on the footpath before the road crosses over the river. Ignore the diagonal path to the right, but continue straight on along the side of the river. When you reach a T-junction of paths, turn right and follow the clear path past the sewage works to the road. Turn right and follow the road all the way back to the car park.

Walk: Wensleydale Challenge - Askrigg to Leyburn

Rise to the challenge: get dropped off at Askrigg and walk back to Leyburn. After a brief climb, the rest is fairly flat and Wensleydale at it's best. The Route what3words for start point: ///modes.officials.bangle Start Point: Askrigg Finish Point: Leyburn Distance: 13 Miles GPX Route Map wensleydalechallenge-askriggtoleyburn2Download Walk Description After an enjoyable bus journey "up dale" to Askrigg on the volunteer Little White Bus featured on Countryfile, the rest is up to you but rise to the challenge and you will follow the River Ure through Wensleydale into Leyburn Market Square with an enormous sense of achievement. It is a long but rewarding walk, however as an alternative, there is the option of jumping aboard the Wensleydale Railway in Redmire. This is just over halfway and can provide a ride back to Leyburn in comfort. The route climbs initially but gently through fields and woodland and then flattens out to contour along the hillside with spectacular views. Above Haw Bank on the right before crossing the wooden foot bridge, it is worth stepping carefully off the route to enjoy Disher Force which thunders down the steep sided gill. There is still evidence of the lead mining industry on the edge of Carperby Moor before seeing the imposing Bolton Castle ahead. The Castle has been owned by the same family since it was built in 1399 by Sir Richard Le Scrope, Lord Chancellor of England whilst Richard II was on the throne. In 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned there. The end for Bolton Castle came in the Civil War, when John Scrope, only a teenager at the time, held the castle for the royalist cause. Parliament besieged the castle for an entire year but in November 1645, Scrope was forced to surrender. Parliament intended to slight the castle to make it unusable in future, but the south-west tower and the west range survived almost completely intact and habitable. Below the castle walls is a medieval garden, a maze, a rose garden, herb garden, vineyard, birds of prey and a bowling green. The route takes you under Great Wegber and Wegber Scar above Carperby where James Herriot had his honeymoon. On the top of Wegber is a prominent building which is Greenhaw Hut, a bothy shelter. Following along the banks of the River Ure leads past the Ice Pond and through the Bolton Hall estate, over the attractive Lords Bridge before continuing the other side of the river into Wensley. It is easy to see how the area was affected by the floods in 2019. Wensley is a pretty village and of course, gives its name to the dale itself.

The Lady Anne Way Walk

Lady Anne’s Way is a long distance path from Skipton Castle in North Yorkshire to Broughham Castle at Penrith in Cumbria. The Route Start Point: Skipton Finish Point: Penrith Distance: 96 miles GPX Route Map ladyanneswayDownload Walk Description what3words for start point: ///elders.bars.somewhere Lady Anne’s Way is a long distance path from Skipton Castle in North Yorkshire to Broughham Castle at Penrith in Cumbria. The route takes in locations associated with landowner Lady Anne Clifford who owned vast estates including a number of castles. This walk follows in her footsteps, re-tracing routes that she may well have used as she travelled between her homes. Making its way through the Yorkshire Dales and the Upper Eden Valley the walk is one of beauty and historical interest. This iconic walk passes through some of the finest areas of Yorkshire including Wensleydale and Wharfedale before continuing on through the remote fells of Mallerstang to enter the historic county of Westmorland and Eden Valley.

Walk: A Pennine Journey

From Settle to Hadrian's Wall and back the walk showcases the wonderful variety of walking experiences available within northern England with its mountains, moorland and river valleys. The Route what3words for start point: ///watchdogs.gifts.trash Start Point: Settle station Finish Point: Settle station Distance: 247 Miles GPX Route Map pennine-journey-complete2Download Walk Description A Pennine Journey is a circular long-distance footpath in northern England originally devised and walked by the Yorkshire-born Lakeland fells guide book writer Alfred Wainwright in 1938. It is 247 miles (388 km) long, starts and ends at Settle in North Yorkshire and traverses some of the most delightful terrain that northern England has to offer. Of its 247 miles route over 220 miles lies within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Northumberland National Park. During the route it touches on sections of the Pennine Way and Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trails and crosses Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk at it’s half way point at Keld. Yorkshire highlights on its way north are Hull Pot, reputedly the largest hole in England, followed by stretches of Wharfedale and Swaledale before the route leaves Yorkshire soon after passing the 17C Tan Hill Inn – at 1732 feet the highest pub in England. On its return to Settle it enters the Yorkshire Dales at Garsdale, which has a station on the Settle-Carlisle Railway Line, passes close to the book town of Sedbergh before arriving back in limestone country at Ingleton after the ascent of one of the Three Peaks – Whernside. The final day from Ingleton sees the ascent of another of the Three Peaks, Ingleborough, before the journey ends back in Settle.

Wainwright's Yorkshire Masterpiece

Longer than the Coast to Coast, more varied than the Pennine Way – and circular. Nick Hallissey discovers the emotional story behind Wainwright’s Pennine Journey, then grab your boots and try it yourself. The name of Alfred Wainwright might be more synonymous with a landscape on the other side of the M6. But long before he became famous for his Lake District guides, he embarked on an epic circular walk through the Yorkshire Dales and the Pennines – a walk that uncovered some of the greatest landscapes in these Broad Acres. A walk that is only now being rediscovered and treasured. Photos: Tom Bailey The gathering storm The story begins in September 1938. The world was heading for war. Newspapers and radios blared with talk of Hitler; of rearmament, air-raid precautions and decontamination squads. As one man remarked: “You turned on the news and sat waiting, with an inside quaking and empty.” That man was Alfred Wainwright, a 31-year-old clerk to the borough treasury of Blackburn. Already a lover of the hills of Yorkshire, it was to these very hills that he looked for escape from the dreadful tidings on the radio.  In the steps on the Romans After taking a train from Blackburn to Settle at the bottom edge of the Yorkshire Dales, he set off on foot with a plan to walk to Hadrian’s Wall, some 110 miles to the north. To get there, he would follow the eastern edge of the Pennines. To come back to Settle, he’d follow the western edge, thus creating a grand circular walk up and down the backbone of England. If that didn’t get Hitler out of his head, he had no idea what would. Halfway along the route, Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich declaring “peace in our time”, and like everyone else’s, the heart of Alfred Wainwright suddenly lifted. But by the time he got back to Settle, that peace had been torn up, and Britain was at war. Published walk Back home, Wainwright committed the whole thing to paper, writing a book titled A Pennine Journey. It was a meticulous account of a magnificent walk. It was the story of the people he met and the meals he ate. But it was also a superb documentary on the build-up to the Second World War and what it did to the hearts and minds of those living through it. There was only one problem. He didn’t want anyone to read it. The Lost Manuscript The book was written “not for others to see but to transport my thoughts to that blissful interlude of freedom”, said he. He showed it to a select group of work colleagues, but the war came and went, and the book lay in a drawer until 1986.  By then, he had become A Wainwright, the guide-poet-artist of the Lake District. Also in the interim, the Pennine Way had been created, with Wainwright himself writing a guidebook to it.  The Way shared fragments of the route of his old Pennine Journey – but only fragments. And it was linear, from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, rather than circular. And crucially, it wasn’t his own creation. So in 1986, when Wainwright and his publisher were discussing projects to help raise funds for his animal rescue charity, he remembered the Pennine Journey. It emerged from the drawer and at his insistence, was published word for word and unedited. Thus it’s an in-the-moment eyewitness account of Britain’s national psyche and the landscapes of the Pennines, frozen in 1938 and thawed out 48 years later. But at this point it’s still just a narrative. It was never intended to be a practical guide to walking the route.  Modern update For that we have to skip forward 12 more years to 1998, and meet compulsive long-distance walkers David and Heather Pitt. Having walked almost every other mega-mile trail that Britain has to offer, the indomitable Pitts were looking for something new. Wainwright fans both, they decided to see if they could translate the Pennine Journey into something they could follow. It took a colossal effort of map-reading, cross-referencing and improvisation, but they not only managed it; they loved it. And in 2004 they convinced the newborn Wainwright Society to adopt the Pennine Journey as an official project, with a guidebook edited by David and Heather, and sections checked and updated by volunteers. Since then, the Pennine Journey has attracted a cadre of devoted fans, and waymarkers have appeared at key points along the trail. But last year – 25 years after the death of Alfred Wainwright – something has happened that is likely to make his first big walk go stratospheric. It’s just gone on the OS map. The journey today “I would never, ever call it my baby,” says David Pitt. “This is Wainwright’s journey; his story. That said, it has been part of our lives for 20 years or so, so I am very attached to it. Some people have called it an obsession, but I don’t think it is. I just love this route and I want others to see it too. Evangelism, maybe, but not obsession!” And it has been a team effort. David says the project would be nothing without the efforts of the volunteer route-checkers, and is full of praise for illustrators Ron Scholes and Colin Bywater, who provided the beautiful Wainwright-style maps and drawings for the guidebook.  But the inclusion of the Pennine Journey on OS mapping is perhaps the biggest step forward in its history. It makes the route that much more obvious to anyone scouring a Pennine map for a good idea, and it gives the Journey equal weight against the far better known Pennine Way. David loves the Way, but he thinks the Journey has more to offer. “It goes to many places that the Pennine Way goes nowhere near: Buckden, Semerwater, Ingleborough, Weardale and Mallerstang, to name just a few,” he enthuses. “But it also includes a lot of the must-see highlights of the Way, so you don’t miss out – like Pen-y-ghent, High Force, Cross Fell and the very best bits of Hadrian’s Wall.  “I also like the circular nature of it: the fact that you do this journey and it brings you back again, which of course the Way doesn’t.” The details The Journey is 247 miles long; 20 miles shorter than the Way. It breaks down into 18 sections, in line with Wainwright’s own walk, and most are between nine and 15 miles. The shortest (Day 1, Settle to Horton) is 7.5 miles, while the longest (Day 17, Sedbergh to Ingleton) is a whopping 17.5 miles. But there are options for downsizing some of the chunkier sections. For example, the 17.5-mile stretch from Buckden to Gunnerside can easily be broken at Bainbridge (in fact I urge you to try this, because Low Mill Guesthouse in Bainbridge is one of the loveliest places that I’ve ever stayed).  Wainwright himself didn’t measure in miles but in valleys. Essentially each stretch of the Journey hops from one valley to another, taking in the likes of Ribblesdale, Wharfedale and Wensleydale; Swaledale, Weardale and Teesdale; the Eden Valley, Chapel-le-Dale and the Mallerstang Valley.  And thanks to some slight tweaks by David and Heather, the route also climbs all of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. The Pennine Way only climbs one. GPX Route Map penninejourneyDownload Hadrian's Wall And up at the apex is Hadrian’s Wall – or at least, the sensational ten-mile stretch of the wall from Housesteads fort to the village of Greenhead, in which the wall lollops along the beetling crags of the Whin Sill.  The wall was Wainwright’s primary objective; he’d never seen it before. There’s almost an irony there: he opens the book by comparing Hitler with Alexander the Great – remorseless empire-builders who sought to invade every corner of the worlds they knew. And yet his destination on this walk to forget all that was the very symbol of empire-building; a relic of another set of conquerors who wanted to possess and control everything they saw. But he was doing this before English Heritage (#ad) was there to protect the wall and tell its story. Before there was a Hadrian’s Wall National Trail. Before there were national parks, visitor centres or even walking guidebooks as we would know them today. In 1938, vast tracts of the countryside were still in private ownership and fenced off from public access.  This all makes Wainwright’s endeavour even more remarkable: a man following his own path, using his wits, surviving on cartographical skill and occasional acts of charity; threading together corpse roads, green lanes and the trackways of forgotten industry.  And yet despite all this mental agility, the Journey did its job. With every mile, come rain or shine, Alfred Wainwright’s mind found peace. Our own Pennine Journey I walked several stretches of the Pennine Journey with photographer Tom Bailey, using David’s newly-reprinted guidebook and relishing the lack of all the hardships mentioned above.  We met up with David and longtime PJ helper Jill King and walked from Buckden in Wharfedale to Bainbridge in Wensleydale. It’s one of the loveliest days of the trail, and exemplary of its nature as an exercise in valley-hopping. From one splendid dale to another across high, wild moorland: that’s what this journey is all about. Along the way is the unexpected treasure of Raydale, the secretive offshoot of Wensleydale that’s home to the fine sheen of Semerwater and England’s shortest river, the Bain. So, brain off, eyes and ears open, enjoy. As an appetiser to the grand enterprise of the Pennine Journey, the day was delicious. The urge to free up two and a half weeks to do the whole damn thing is nagging at me as I type. It would be contrived to liken today’s era of global anxiety to the circumstances in which Wainwright undertook his Pennine Journey. But with every awful thing we hear about on our radios, it’s hard not to feel that going for a massive walk is a brilliant idea.  On the other hand, you don’t have to be unhappy to go on this walk. And you don’t have to be alone either: David and Heather will vouch for that. The truth is, whatever your mental landscape when you set out from Settle, I’m pretty certain that by the time you return, the world will look and feel a lot better.  It’s not about the destination, you see.It’s about the Journey.  Nick Hallissey and Tom Bailey are the deputy editor and photographer forCountry Walking Magazine.

Bainbridge, Semerwater, Raydale and the Roman Road Walk