Walks in Buckden

Walk: Buckden Pike

One of the best of the mountains in the Dales and one of the 'Dales 30'. Buckden Pike sits at the head of Wharfedale with splendid views in all directions. The Route what3words for start point: ///skirting.bids.success Start Point: Buckden Car Park, BD23 5JA Finish Point: Buckden Car Park, BD23 5JA Distance: 5.5 Miles GPX Route Map buckdenpikeDownload Walk Description Start in the village of Buckden and head up the steep but obvious path towards this lovely Dales hill. It is worth walking along the 1 mile summit ridge to the Polish War Memorial before returning to the summit. On the descent take in the lead mines on the slopes above the village of Buckden. Here the remains of an industry which dominated the valley 150 years ago.

Walk: Buckden, Hubberholme and Cray

A walk along the ancient roads and paths between Buckden, Hubberholme, Yockenthwaite, Cray and Buckden Rake. The Route what3words for start point: ///shielding.position.hunt Start Point: Buckden, Wharfedale Finish Point: Buckden, Wharfedale Distance: 7 Miles GPX Route Map buckden-hubberholme-crayDownload Walk Description A pleasant riverside path leads from Buckden to Hubberholme, famed from its wonderful old pub and ancient church, which was founded in the 12th Century as a chapel in the Norman hunting forest of Langstrothdale Chase, as the upper reaches of Wharfedale are known. Buckden began life as a village within this Norman hunting forest where the forest officials lived; this was the game preserve of the Earls of Northumberland. Hubberholme’s church, dedicated to St Michael and All Angels, boasts a wealth of interesting features in particular a very rare Rood Loft which was brought here from Coverham Abbey in 1558, one of only two in Yorkshire that escaped the Reformation and possibly the oldest in England.  From Hubberholme, a riverside path leads to Yockenthwaite, a name that stirs the imagination that is derived from the Old Norse ‘Eogan’s clearing’.   From Yockenthwaite a path climbs up above the valley through limestone meadows to reach Scar House, an old farmhouse that dates from 1698 although extensively restored in 1876. The present building stands on the site of a much older farmhouse. In 1652 George Fox, founder of the Quakers, visited Scar House and converted the farmer, after which the house was used as a Friends Meeting House by locals. It is now in the care of the National Trust. From Scar House, a wonderful path contours around the hillside, with magnificent views across Langstrothdale and upper Wharfedale, to reach the hamlet of Cray. Along the way, the path passes beneath a conspicuous knoll that is crowned by a large cairn. This is Cray Barrow, a Bronze Age burial mound for a local chieftain that dates back some 4,000 years. The hamlet of Cray is famed for its waterfalls as well as Wharfedale’s highest pub. The name of the hamlet is derived from the Celtic word meaning “fresh stream”, which is very apt for there is tumbling water all around.  The final section of this walk follows Buckden Rake, a superb track that heads across the lower flanks of Buckden Pike before dropping back down to Buckden. This track follows the course of the Roman road between the forts at Ilkley and Bainbridge via the lonely moorland of Stake Moss.  

Horsehead Moor and Deepdale Walk

This is a five and half mile walk up Horse Head Pass and along the remote moorland ridge, with magnificent views of the Three Peaks, returning along the beautiful River Wharfe. The remote moorland ridge and river environment is a haven for both woodland and river birds making it perfect for bird watching. The Route what3words for start point: ///bride.spenders.cherub Start Point: Yockenthwaite Bridge Finish Point: Yockenthwaite Bridge Distance: 6 Miles Getting there Yockenthwaite Bridge is between Oughtershaw and Hubberholme, and is easiest to reach from Buckden on the B6160. Take the Grassington road from the A59 near Skipton or the Bishopdale road from Aysgarth or West Burton in Wensleydale. GPX Route Map horsehead-moor-and-deepdaleDownload Walk Description Enjoy a five and half mile walk up Horse Head Pass and along the remote moorland ridge, with magnificent views of the Three Peaks, returning along the beautiful River Wharfe. The remote moorland ridge and river environment is a haven for both woodland and river birds making it perfect for bird watching. Starting at Yockenthwaite Bridge, you’ll follow the bridleway, signed to Halton Gill. The track zig-zags steeply uphill, across a large area of common land known as the Hagg. Continue along the route until you're greeted with magnificent views of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. Continue along the moorland ridge keeping an eye out for the mosaic of various vegetation types. The red-brown patches are mainly purple moor grass, which tends to grow on boulder clay or Millstone Grit, and the areas of green grasses mixed in with small flowers grow over limestone. Follow the footpath downhill towards Beckermonds with Greenfield Forest away to your left.  When you meet the River Wharfe,  turn right and follow the Dales Way footpath along the river towards Deepdale. Here the river flows through areas of limestone which are ideal for sitting on for a picnic, when the water levels are low. Venture along the route to Deepdale across the road bridge and turn right into the hamlet. A short way up the track, take the footpath on the right, where you will arrive back at Yockenthwaite. Lunch? If you want somewhere to go for lunch, the nearest food & drink are available at The George Inn, at Hubberholme.

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.

Dales Way Walk

Starting in Ilkley and finishing on the shores of Lake Windermere, the Dales Way is a 78 mile walk through the Yorkshire Dales and into the Lake District. The Route Start Point: Ilkley Finish Point: Windermere Distance: 78 Miles Getting there Ilkley is easily accessed by bus, train, car and is only a short taxi ride from Leeds-Bradford Airport. GPX Route Map DalesWayDownload Walk Description This walk was initially devised by the West Riding Ramblers' Association with the 'leading lights' being Colin Speakman and Tom Wilcock (Footpath Secretary). The route was announced to the public in 1968 and the first recorded crossing was by a group of Bradford Grammar School Venture Scouts in 1969. The first half of the walk follows the River Wharfe upstream to the main watershed of Northern England at Ribblehead. The second half follows several river valleys (Dentdale, River Mint, River Kent) to descend to the shores of Windermere. Most walkers tackling this route take about a week, in sections of 10 to 15 miles per day and taking a rest day or two. Accommodation Staying the night near the Buckden to Gearstones section is possible at: Oughtershaw Hall The George Inn, Hubberholme Nethergill Farm Luggage help If you would like help with planning or transporting luggage on this route, the Dales Way Association has a list here: http://www.dalesway.org/services.htm

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.

Buckden Pike Circular Walk